Little Heart
by Alisa Yang
Summary: A year after the aborted Fourth Apocalypse, Daryl Yan is involuntarily discharged from the military, the only life he has known. Weighted down with the burden of who he was and uncertain of who he wants to be in a life where he is no longer a pilot, he meets a feisty runt he never expected to see again.
1. Chapter 1: Discharged

Chapter 1: Discharged

_Exit interview, my ass_, thought Daryl. He sat in civilian clothes across from a man in uniform and he knew well enough that he had been interviewed so frequently over the past year that the UN had all the information it could possibly want out of him. This... this was just formality, and to let him know not to let the door hit him on his way out.

"You are lucky to be leaving with an OTH," said the captain across from him. "If you were any higher ranked you would have faced a court-martial."

Not because he had fought for a GHQ that had deceived the UN regarding where its loyalty lay, but because he had participated in the coup that killed his father, the general in command prior to Shuichiro Keido. But they could not prove how much knowledge he had of the coup beforehand, or that he knew his father would be unlawfully replaced. And they didn't know that he had been the one who killed him.

Daryl said nothing.

The captain sighed. "You probably could have avoided this if you had contacted your superiors back in the States and let them know you suspected something was wrong with the transition in power. You must have had some idea beforehand, seeing as they jailed you for insubordination and disrupting their operation in Loop 7. We don't ask for heroes, Yan. Much of what happened here was preventable, if you or anyone else at GHQ had spoken up."

Daryl had heard this talk before, but now it was with resignation rather than anger. Nothing would change. He supposed the OTH was fair. Other Than Honorable, they called it. The captain tried to sell it, telling him how he would get to keep his veteran's benefits, but that didn't mean anything to him. He was only eighteen, and he wasn't banged up enough to start needing disability. The worst part was that he would be banned from reenlisting in any branch of the armed services.

What was he supposed to do? He'd grown up a military brat. He didn't know anything outside a uniform.

The captain lifted his tablet and said, "Hold up your phone."

Daryl did and the captain tapped a button.

"I sent you a directory with your walking papers."

So that was it. With a press of a button it was over. Daryl tried not to think all that remained of his career was now a set files on his phone.

"There will be one final deposit into your account," said the captain. "All discharged GHQ soldiers are being given enough funds to enable their return to their home countries. I think you know it's not a cheap flight back to the U.S. so it's not a bad deal for you."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

Daryl stood and halfheartedly lifted his hand as though to salute, but then he remembered he was no longer military and dropped his hand to his side. He picked up the duffel containing his personal belongings and walked out the office.

On either side of the hallway were offices full of personnel discharging and being discharged. It was finally happening. After being detained for over a year the UN was finally finished with the former members of the Anti Bodies. Civilian personnel from the GHQ had already been released a few months earlier. Only a few of the senior officers remained in custody.

Not that the UN would be able to find many people left to blame. Keido was dead. Segai was dead. Rowan...

Rowan might have been released the same time as him. Why hadn't that man at least attempted to get in the elevator with him? Daryl wasn't worth his life. He wasn't the good kid Rowan thought he was.

How could Rowan ever think someone capable of killing his own father was good?

He started walking, shutting out the hushed conversations of the people he passed. He was not a prisoner anymore. They could see his bag. He had his papers. He was leaving. He could see the glass doors of the lobby only a few steps away.

But what then? Outside was the end. His final instructions were to leave. He'd always had orders to follow, assignments to fulfill. The military was structured. The officer's academy was structured. Even school had been structured.

Beyond those doors was nothing, but though he was now a civilian he could not ignore his final imperative to leave. Daryl stepped up to the glass doors and they rolled aside to let him pass. He did not hesitate as he walked through.

-GC-

It was only when he walked up to the curb and dropped his bag did he finally allow it to sink in that he really had nowhere to go.

The spring weather was mild, with clouds but no expectation of rain. Daryl managed to find a hotel in walking distance of the detainment center and apparently he was not the only lost soul from the GHQ. The clerk at the counter said he was the fifth that afternoon. The room she assigned him was small, with barely any room to walk between dresser and bed, but it would do. All he needed was place to think, and quite frankly after the cramped quarters that had been a cell in all but name, he was fine with this. At least it had a window.

And a mirror. A real full-sized mirror and not one of those crappy ones just big enough for him to make sure he was brushing his teeth properly.

He didn't know what to make of the haggard person looking back at him. His bleached hair had grown out in detainment, and now there was nothing but the natural black. Every damn Asian person had dark hair. When he first arrived here he found it so easy to get lost in the sea of Japanese, just one more person in a country where everyone looked like everyone else.

He'd bleached it so he wouldn't get lost in the crowd, so that when he did something he would damn well stand out. And it had worked. The other soldiers remembered the blond pilot with the highest kill record in Tokyo. If ever they met the man behind the Endlave, they did not forget Kill-'em-All Daryl.

He took out his phone and switched it to tablet mode as he sat on the bed. Daryl could see the final payment pending on his military bank account. Former military account, he amended. The payment was just enough for a one way ticket back to the United States, as promised.

A swipe of the tablet brought up his probate account. He noticed the amount and let himself fall back against the worn blanket, phone resting on the bed above his head.

He didn't want to look at it. The amount in there dwarfed his earnings as a pilot. He'd only earned two years' worth of pay, and half of that was while sitting in detainment waiting to be discharged. But his father had had decades in the military. He had been a general. He had not been badly off.

While all that Loop 7 madness had been going on in Tokyo, his father's estate had gone through probate, and apparently he'd never changed his will since Daryl was a child. Everything had gone to him. Daryl had been half-afraid that his father might have left everything to that woman he had seen him with in the elevator, that in the end he would have nothing.

He could buy a house with his inheritance, someplace nice with a few rooms in a big city like San Francisco or maybe even New York. But it was blood money, earned by killing his own father. He couldn't live like that, couldn't live in a home he only knew he had because he had taken his inheritance by force.

But he hadn't been employed long enough on his lieutenant's salary to be able to afford anything other than an apartment, and he would have to manage the rent somehow.

Daryl lifted the tablet into the air where he could see it and closed his account information. There was a new directory on the main screen, blinking. Opening it, he could see all the U.S. army had discharged him with. He could see his identification, his canceled security clearances, his passport, and... a work permit.

At first he was not certain why that would be among his papers, but then he remembered that Segai had ordered their issue to all the foreign Anti Bodies when Keido had taken over as the president of Japan. It had been a formality to show that they were legally allowed to be working inside Japan for Japan, never mind that Keido's government and the GHQ were essentially one and the same. But the work permit had not been canceled. It was still good.

Daryl dropped his arm to his side. He relaxed his grip on the phone and heard the tablet side of it shut down. A voice in the back of his mind told him that he really should start looking at flights and decide where he wanted to go.

He had requested his father's house and assets be sold while in detention. There was no going home, and in any case Daryl had left nothing there. He had moved so many times as a child that he had never been allowed to keep more than he could fit inside a couple of boxes, and once he had joined the academy, and then active service itself, there was no place to keep more.

Really, he could go anywhere. He could go to Utah, Minnesota, New Mexico, maybe even a different country; just someplace that would never have heard of Daryl Yan.

But what bothered him the most was the fear that where he went didn't matter, and going there would be no different than staying here.

* * *

_Thanks for reading the start of this story of mine. I recently finished Guilty Crown and was disappointed the Daryl x Tsugumi ship tease didn't really go anywhere, so I figured I'd write this. Yes, I made Daryl's hair bleached. Even though Daryl is not Japanese, he is obviously of East Asian descent since Tsugumi easily mistakes him for a "fellow" high school student, so he shouldn't have natural blond hair. Yan in particular is a Chinese last name so it makes the most sense to me if Daryl is Chinese American. And I admit I do like the idea that he bleached it to get attention. Don't worry, Tsugumi will show up in the next chapter._


	2. Chapter 2: Hostility

Chapter 2: Hostility

"School's too easy, Aya!" said Tsugumi, spinning out in front of her friend's wheelchair. Her long dark hair whirled around her shoulders, shining in the bright sun. It was after school and a Saturday, which meant half day and they had the rest of the afternoon free.

"I finished my homework before we even left class," said Tsugumi. "Now I remember why it wasn't a big deal when I stopped going."

"That's because you were doing the work in class instead of paying attention to lecture," said Ayase, shaking her head. "Not all of us can do that."

They were in different classes, Tsugumi attending as a second year and Ayase as a third, though they were more than a year apart in age. Ayase had chosen to resume school at a lower grade level to make her academic reintegration easier on herself, even if it meant she was a little older than her classmates. For Tsugumi it hadn't mattered. But at least they were at the same school.

Everyone had scattered after the events of the Fourth Apocalypse, which annoyed Tsugumi, because it felt like she _should_ be able to see her friends whenever she wanted, but Ayase told her it was only expected. It was only because of the GHQ that they had come together in the first place, and now that the GHQ was gone, they had lives to go back to. Still, Tsugumi wished they would say hello more than once every few months. Something more than a text message. It wasn't like Tokyo was that big a city.

Except that some of them were no longer _in_ Tokyo. She knew that Shu himself had chosen to go to college in Osaka, and Argo had moved to Kyoto for work.

"I don't want to go home yet," said Tsugumi, stopping her spin in time to peer into the window of a bakery. She eyed the sweets; rows of anpan and melon bread, each in individual plastic wrappers.

Ayase laughed. "Is that going to be your lunch?"

"Not today!" said Tsugumi, holding up a lecturing finger. "Bakeries have sandwiches too!"

"If you just want a sandwich you know there's a convenience store closer to our apartment building. It'll be cheaper."

Tsugumi opened the door. "But I'm hungry, and I don't want to go home yet."

Ayase rolled her wheelchair through the door and to the stack of trays for the customers' use. "Fine, fine. So we'll eat lunch here?" She picked up two trays and handed one to Tsugumi.

Tsugumi grinned as she took it. "Yep."

The sandwiches were more expensive than the ones from the convenience store, but tasted so much better, and they hadn't been sitting wrapped in plastic all day. Tsugumi especially liked the potato croquette, and though Ayase gave her a look of amusement upon seeing what else was on her tray, she pretended to ignore the fact she was also purchasing two melon bread for later. It was no good going to a bakery and not actually getting some pastries.

They talked about Ayase's chances at college, which Tsugumi thought were better than Ayase gave herself credit for. Anyone with enough self-discipline to master an Endlave to the level that she did would be a force to reckon with as long as she set her mind to it, and she still had another eight months to study until the national entrance exams.

"I'm thinking of going into physical therapy after college," said Ayase. "I know I won't be lifting up other patients, but I like to think that I can set an example."

"That would be just like you," said Tsugumi, between bites of her sandwich. "Me, I would probably graduate and turn into a professional hacker."

Ayase gave her a puzzled look. "You're already one of the best in Tokyo."

"But no one paid me for it." Tsugumi puffed out her cheeks and sighed. "Unless you count food and a place to sleep. Gai was pretty nice, taking a fourteen-year-old kid and giving me a place to stay. But when I think about it, the only thing better than doing what you like, is getting paid to do what you like. So I want to graduate and get paid."

"Have you thought that maybe you'll want to do something else?"

Tsugumi shrugged and smiled. "I have time," she said with a mischievous tilt of her head. "I'm not the one graduating at the end of the school year."

-GC-

They meandered through the city. In the distance they could make out the construction around the old Loop 7 that was slowly being reclaimed. Unemployment was high and the city crowded with all the former residents who had needed another place to live. The other kids talked about it at school, seniors who were afraid there would be no jobs for them if they didn't go to college, maybe not even after college. Tokyo wasn't the city it used to be. Some of Tsugumi's classmates would probably leave like Argo and go somewhere else in search of a job.

But each new building that rose in the battered space of the old Loop 7 was a new place for people to live and work. It might be bad now, but it would get better. Tsugumi believed that. In six years, by the time she graduated university, Loop 7 should be all built over and there would be no need to worry.

"Aya, let's go see the planes!" she said, pushing her friend along.

To her delight, Ayase did not put up much protest aside from the speed at which Tsugumi wheeled her.

There was a park about a half mile from the airport that offered a great view, and usually they could see a few of the UN Endlaves patrolling the perimeter.

After ousting the remains of the GHQ they had installed yet another provisional government, but elections were due later this year to fast track Japan back to its own governance and avoid the problems created when the GHQ had remained in command for too long. For now though, the UN still guarded all areas of national security. Tsugumi and Ayase couldn't come any closer to the airport than a road lined with a chain-link fence, but there was little else that blocked a view of the runway.

"You're like a little kid," said Ayase, watching Tsugumi beam at the take-off of a large double-decker passenger plane.

Tsugumi stuck out her tongue, but at the departing plane. She blew and made a wet noise. "That's because I'm saying good-bye to all the GHQ. They started sending them home yesterday. I bet some of them were on that plane." She pointed at another one taxiing down the runway. "And I bet there are more on that one too."

Ayase squinted at her. "Really? You dragged me over here on a Saturday so you could blow raspberries at people who _might_ be on those planes?"

Tsugumi giggled. "Well it's a nice thought, isn't it?"

Then she noticed they weren't the only ones in the park looking at the departing planes. There was a boy standing by the road looking up. He had dark hair and the most melancholy expression. She didn't think she should know him, but something about his face looked familiar. He wasn't in a school uniform, just a collared white shirt and blue slacks, which was of absolutely no help in identifying him.

"Excuse me," she said to Ayase, with a catlike grin.

Ayase followed her gaze, noted the stranger, and said, "If you harass him, don't expect me to bail you out."

"I'm not _that_ bad," said Tsugumi.

She patted her head to make sure the cat ears of her headband were on straight and then bounced up to the boy she could not quite recall. It would be fun, she told herself, like figuring out a puzzle.

He didn't seem to notice her, so she silently giggled to herself and said, "If your mouth stays open like that you're gonna catch some flies."

Tsugumi had never seen anyone jerk away so fast. Did he think she was gonna bite him or something?

She frowned. No, something was wrong. That reaction wasn't just surprise. She looked at him harder. It was something about the face. He was recovering himself now and actually facing her directly, but there was still something off, something missing. Glasses? Should he have been wearing glasses?

"You don't have to startle people like that," he said.

His voice was quiet, strained.

"I'm sorry," she said, though she did not mean it and didn't bother to disguise it, "but you look like someone I know."

"Really?"

His manner was feigned. He recognized her, and she didn't recognize him. She was no longer sure she liked this puzzle. Why wouldn't he want to remind her of who he was?

Tsugumi grinned, thinking of a bluff. "Oh, I know! I saw you at one of those GHQ sympathizer rallies! You're here all sad watching them leave!"

"What! You runt, why would anyone ever be at one of those?!"

And as soon as the words left his mouth, an airplane could have taken off right next to her and she wouldn't have noticed. She did know him, and she could see from the shock in his eyes that he realized that she now knew as well.

The world snapped into focus and she was no less sharp herself. "Why the hell aren't you on one of those planes, you weakling?"

"I'm not required to leave the country you know!"

"And you like hanging around Japan because people here love you so much?" She glared at him.

He sighed. "Look, I didn't come here to keep fighting with Funeral Parlor. I just wanted..."

"Wanted what?"

"Never mind."

He looked away, and Tsugumi could see him more clearly in her memory now. His hair had been bleached blond back then, and he had been wearing glasses. She had only seen him once, but she remembered he had been such a cantankerous helper at the festival, so much so that she remembered his voice.

He was that freakish GHQ pilot who kept clashing with Ayase, the big mouth always broadcasting so everyone could hear him. He even fired on his own men, though she wasn't sure why. At first she was surprised to have heard the voice of the boy from the festival coming from the loudspeakers of a GHQ Endlave, and then when she heard him again in the final assault on Ward 24 she knew it was no mistake. She didn't know if he was a student recruited by the GHQ or had been a spy from the beginning, but there was no denying he was completely crazy.

"You should go home," she said, her voice cold.

He looked at her, a glare she remembered from better times, but there was no longer any ferocity behind it. For a moment she thought he would say something, but instead he turned and walked away.

Ayase wheeled up to her. "So who is he?"

Tsugumi brightened as she prepared to recount her victory. "You'll never guess."

"So are you going to make me ask you all day or will you tell me anyway?"

"He's that crackhead GHQ pilot who was always screaming at you."

Ayase looked at the retreating figure, perplexed. "What? Really?"

"You couldn't tell from him yelling?"

"I couldn't hear what he was saying. I guess if the adrenalin isn't running and I don't see an Endlave barreling at me, I can't tell him from anyone else. His Endlaves always move with a certain attitude."

"Yeah, I guess you never saw him in person."

"I wouldn't have imagined. He looked so sad."

Tsugumi peered at Ayase. "Are you all right? If that guy is sad it's only because he's a sad sack of a human being. Shouldn't you want to chase after him and knock him over in your wheelchair?"

Ayase shook her head. "I'm good. If that's really him, he can't do anything now. He's already lost."

* * *

_The Japanese market near my house sells potato croquette sandwiches. They're quite good! I know Tsugumi's a little cold to Daryl right now, but you have to remember the last words she said to him in the series was "Can it! You're just a weakling!" right before she shot him from behind using a remote portion of Ayase's Endlave. She was definitely looking to kick his ass._


	3. Chapter 3: Drudgery

Chapter 3: Drudgery

Endlaves were originally designed for military work, but as with many inventions created by the government, they eventually found they way to the private sector. There was a use for remote controlled work machines in areas that were otherwise dangerous for their operators. Loop 7 was one of those areas, where Endlaves could be used as heavy labor to clear the rubble and erect new foundations.

"I want to make it clear that I'm only hiring you because Yamano vouched for you," said the foreman. "I don't care how good a soldier you were, only that you'll be a competent pilot."

Daryl sucked down his pride and kept his expression carefully neutral. Unlike his early days in the GHQ, he no longer had the reputation of his father to bandy around. He would have to tolerate this man. He needed this job.

"Taking work a Japanese man could use," the foreman grumbled. "You better be worth it."

At least Yamano had spoken up for him. Daryl had called some of the former GHQ under his command who had been native Japanese. A few of them had found work here, though it was scarce. He had never been close to his squad members. For all he knew most of them had hated his guts; for his attitude, for being the general's son, for being a teenager in charge of adults, but they all knew his skills. Daryl might not have been pleasant, but if they were to pick an Endlave pilot to bring with them to a firefight there was no question they would pick him, at least until the mess where he interfered to save that runt. There was no reason to think an excellent military pilot couldn't transition to being a civilian one. He might not need to shoot anything, but it was still the same neural interface.

"You will not be disappointed," said Daryl.

The pay was not as good as he would have liked, but it was enough for him to move into his own apartment; one bedroom, with a tiny balcony. If he couldn't decide where he wanted to go, staying in Tokyo was as good as anyplace else. His spoken Japanese was good enough to pass for native, thanks to training and having moved here at a young enough age. He probably could become comfortable.

Come what may, he would just have to deal with it one day at a time. Daryl tried not to think of his new job as a come-down from what he was. Without a conflict to fight in, it would no longer be possible to be Kill-'em-All Daryl, and Rowan... Rowan wouldn't have wanted him to stay that way. Be nicer.

He didn't know how. It wasn't like the other pilots at the construction firm brought each other cookies.

Each day he reported to work, either clearing away debris or digging holes for the foundations of new buildings, and his life took on a certain monotony. But he threw himself into his job, aiming once again to be the best. No one could complain if he did a better work than anyone else. He bleached his hair again, though he knew the foreman hated it, because at a distance everyone would know who he was. Japan was a country of conformity, and Daryl Yan had never been good about conforming. It was the plan of attack he knew; if he couldn't be liked, he could be so good he was impossible to ignore.

That was what got him through the officer academy when he was a good four years younger than his first year classmates, what allowed him to get posted to the GHQ in Japan as an Endlave pilot. His father would have been stupid to deny his assignment and no one could have possibly taken it for nepotism. In his place any other general would have taken him too.

But as he went home, Daryl wondered if this was all that life would be. He could take orders without a problem. In that way it was no different from being in the GHQ. Most of the assignments were boring. But construction wasn't a job where there was a long career ladder ahead of him, not like when he was in the army. Perhaps he could eventually be a foreman himself, but there was really nothing else after that.

Go to work. Come home. Eat and sleep. And he was only eighteen. That was a lot of drudgery ahead of him.

He stopped by the convenience store in early May and picked up a shopping basket. It was late and the sky outside already dark. He'd worked past sunset with the construction lights on to finish out the last of a dig that had fallen behind schedule. Afterwards some of his coworkers had gone out to drink, but he just wanted to go home. He did not fit in with them. He was still a kid.

In the U.S. he would legally be considered an adult, but in Japan he had another two years.

Daryl liked this store because it had a good selection of precooked Chinese food in the refrigerated section, or at least Chinese food that appealed to Japanese people. He opened the refrigerator door and placed a couple packages filled with small white buns in his basket. He was going to reach for a third when he spotted a familiar figure about six steps away looking at the other side of the aisle.

It was the runt, the girl with the cat ears headband. Her long dark hair was pushed over the shoulder of a lavender blouse and she had a basket in the crook of her left arm. She hadn't seen him, her attention occupied by the pastries set out on one of the display tables.

It would be his luck to run into her again.

He let the door close, figuring he would look and see if there was anything else in the store he wanted before coming back here, but at that moment she turned, and there was no escape.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she demanded.

"I could ask you the same thing," he retorted.

"I'm getting the discounted pastries," she said, holding up a jam-filled danish. "They're always 15% off by this time in the evening and I need breakfast for the next few days."

"That's breakfast?! Shouldn't you be eating something healthier?"

He couldn't help looking in her basket and saw it had nothing but melon bread, danishes, and anpan. And she was buying the end of day stuff the store wouldn't sell tomorrow.

"It's not like I eat this all the time!" Her glare probably would burn through walls given enough time. "But if I have the choice between tinkering with Funell or cooking, it's hard to resist Funell!"

"Funell?"

"And what about you?" she demanded, striding up to him. "Giving me a lecture about junk food when all you have are precooked buns in your basket. Do you not know how to cook?"

"Of course I can cook," said Daryl, pulling his basket away from her, "but I just got off work, and if you haven't noticed the time, it's late."

And though he could cook some things, truthfully he did not like cooking for one. There was always too much food and he was not fond of leftovers.

Trying to ignore her, he opened the refrigerator door again and pulled out another pack of four buns to put in his basket. He couldn't do anything about her now that she had seen him, so he might as well wrap up here and go home. But she did not seem intent on dropping the conversation.

"Are you some kind of _nikuman_ freak? How packages of buns do you need?"

"It's not _nikuman_," he snapped, shutting the door again. "_Gai bao_."

"What?" she asked.

"It's full of chicken, not pork."

"But you called it something else."

"_Gai bao. _It's Chinese. It's what my family called them."

She peered at him, and for a moment the hostility was gone, replaced by curiosity. "You're Chinese?"

"Chinese from America."

"That's still a lot of chicken buns." Her suspicious squint returned.

"They remind me of when I was with my family, okay? Sheesh." He looked away.

When they were still living in the States and close enough to his grandmother, her son could not deny her a weekly family gathering on Sundays. His grandmother had insisted on dim sum, the small dishes of buns, dumplings, and other treats meant to be shared by everyone at the table. His parents would sit on one side of him, his grandmother on the other, like how families were supposed to be together during a meal. But then his grandmother passed and his father took an assignment overseas. They didn't eat dim sum together again.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to pry."

When he looked at her again he saw her shove a wrapped pastry at him.

"It's a chocolate filled croissant," she said. "The last one. You should have it because chocolate makes people feel better."

Without waiting for him to take it, she put it in his basket next to the packages of _gai bao._ He watched her leave, her long hair swishing behind her. Once again, he didn't know what to make of her. Did she know what it had cost him to protect her? That he'd been jailed for insubordination when he bought her time to escape the massacre that would have otherwise happened in Loop 7?

He might as well have torpedoed his career for her. If he had stood back, if he had let her be killed, then he could have claimed ignorance to the UN investigators, that he was just following orders, that he had no idea how wrong things had gone on above him. Other soldiers had done so. Others had been free to return to their countries, to continue to serve.

Daryl looked down at the plastic wrapped croissant in his basket. There were warm swirls of brown in the design around the edges of the wrapper that made him think of cocoa.

No, she probably only remembered the psychotic soldier who had tried to kill her and her companions. If he had turned on his own men, it was only because he had been such a loose cannon to begin with. It wasn't because he had met her or liked the candy apple she had given him.

And now she had forced another piece of food on him.

He thought about putting it back on the display table for someone who would like it more. It would have been easy, and she would never know, but he left it in his basket when he took it to the register.

When he got home to his apartment, he set the bag from the convenience store on the counter and pulled out the croissant resting on top. It was long past dinner time. He set it to the side and wrested out the packages of _gai bao_. Most of the buns he set in the refrigerator, to be eaten over the next few days, and a pair of them he put in a steamer.

"Be nicer," he muttered to himself. "I don't think I managed that."

He had taken the candied apple at the festival only because she had given him no choice, all but forcing it in his mouth. This time she had thankfully aimed for his basket, but he had kept the croissant, hadn't he? He didn't put it back on the table.

Maybe that was progress.

_...shut up and accept it!_

He placed a hand on his forehead and sighed, remembering the expression on her face as she shoved the apple at him. It was terrible.

Daryl looked again at the croissant sitting on the kitchen counter by the empty plastic bag. He shouldn't ruin his dinner by eating dessert first. Still, he opened the wrapper and took a bite.

It was sweet, too sweet. But it was good.

* * *

_The "niku" in "nikuman" is the kanji for meat, typically meaning meat off a four-legged animal (you generally wouldn't use it for chicken), so it does matter that Daryl points out that is it not nikuman since the filling is different. On a related note, the "gai" in "gai bao" is Cantonese Chinese for "chicken" and the bun itself is the "bao."_

_I debated whether or not to post chapter 3 so quickly because I'm doubtful I can keep up the blistering pace of a chapter every other day. I'm trying to work two chapters ahead of my most recent posted chapter, and as of this writing I have started the first draft of chapter 5. But I'm going to have to take a break to write some non-fanfic stuff for an external deadline and there's no getting around that, so I wanted to make sure if I disappeared for a few days it would be on a chapter that ended with some warm fuzzies._


	4. Chapter 4: Reconciliation

Chapter 4: Reconciliation

"Hey, Ayase," said Tsugumi, waving to her friend. Ayase waited in the shade of a large tree as other students walked past her on their way home. "I saw the crazy pilot again last night."

"You did? Where?"

It had been a few weeks since they had seen him near the airport.

"At the convenience store," said Tsugumi. "The one two blocks from our apartment building. It was while I was picking up the discount pastries."

As Tsugumi talked, Ayase turned her wheelchair and started rolling herself down the main thoroughfare to the school gate. Tsugumi gamely walked alongside.

"I was surprised," she said. "But I think I'm starting to see why you called him sad."

Ayase looked up at Tsugumi, a wry smile on her face. "You didn't reduce him to tears did you?"

"Don't worry, I didn't make a scene. There was no yelling, though I did call him a freak." Tsugumi stretched her arms and folded them behind her head. "But I wouldn't have pictured him as someone who would stuff a bunch of chicken buns in his basket just because he felt homesick. If he misses his family so much, why doesn't he go home?"

"Maybe he can't."

"I don't see why not. A lot of the GHQ have. I assume the UN is paying for it."

Ayase shrugged. "So how was he? Besides sad. If the two of you weren't yelling at each other I guess he didn't do anything crazy."

"I don't know. He said he was working late. But he doesn't look much older than me. Why isn't he in school?"

"Some people never go to high school," said Ayase. "You don't need to join a group like Funeral Parlor to skip it."

"But we had a good reason to. Do you think he skipped because he worked for the GHQ?"

They continued down the street in silence. Then Tsugumi said, "Hey, Aya, we fought with that weakling enough times we knew whenever he showed up. You could tell it was him from how his Endlave moved, and I could tell from the way he was always screaming at us. But did we ever know his name? Did we know he was our age?"

Tsugumi could understand why she and Ayase were allowed to fight in Funeral Parlor despite being teenagers. Gai had only been seventeen himself. Age did not matter in a resistance movement so long as everyone was able to contribute. But the GHQ was set up by the UN with an international team of soldiers comprising the Anti Bodies unit. This boy was an anomaly. He shouldn't have become a pilot worth sending abroad at such a young age. That was the stuff of TV shows.

"It's easier to integrate yourself with the neural interface the younger you start," said Ayase. "Shibungi told me that when I first joined Funeral Parlor. I didn't know his age, but with the way he handled his Endlave, he was either talented, young, or both."

"Ayase..."

Tsugumi had a question on her lips, but let it die. She relaxed her arms, bringing them down to her sides as she thought. Ayase had been fifteen when she started with Funeral Parlor's stolen Endlave, giving her two years' experience by the time she first met that crazy pilot, and he had so thoroughly beaten her that Tsugumi had had to bail her out to avoid any possibility of brain damage from having the head of her Endlave destroyed.

Granted, he had been piloting a top of the line Steiner model at the time, which placed Ayase at a severe disadvantage, but it was a disadvantage that meant nothing when the tables were turned and it was Ayase in the Steiner and he in the standard commission. He had nearly crushed her throat before Oogumo managed to free her.

There was no question he was very good, at least when he was in control of himself. Despite controlling the superior Endlave, he had been downright erratic in their last encounter. The two of them had only beaten him because they had been two operating as one, with Ayase distracting him from the front to give Tsugumi the opening she needed to wreck his Endlave from the back.

Whoever had been his monitor must have been fast to bail him out before he suffered any permanent brain damage, or maybe he had, and that had blasted the crazy out of him. It wasn't a logical conclusion, but it was a pleasant one.

"Were you going to ask me something?" said Ayase.

"How come you're not mad at him? He tried to kill us."

Ayase frowned. "If he was still trying to, I would be, but he walked away when you confronted him, right? It's not like he's going to be able to hop in an Endlave and come after us again. I'd rather he just disappear than waste time thinking about him." She paused. "Wait. He hasn't done anything to you, has he? Now that I think about it, he did seem to have an odd fixation on you during that last battle, calling you out when he heard your voice through my Endlave. It's like he knew you were the one monitoring me."

"It's because I met him before. That's how I knew it was him in the park."

Tsugumi thought back to the sullen boy at the school festival, remembering how she had leaned over the stack of boxes he had carried for her. He had complained she overloaded him, and then tried to refuse the candied apple she gave him specifically with the intent of changing that glower of his into something friendly. He had seemed such an ordinary if disagreeable boy.

"I guess he was spying on us," said Tsugumi. "He said he's from America, so he probably was never a student at Tennozu. The GHQ must have sent him since he was the right age to blend in. I met him while we were setting up the festival."

"You know, if you're still curious about him, Shibungi could probably pull up some data. He was the pilot of the Steiner, right? I remember Gai had made his Void part of the operation where we stole it, so we probably have something on him."

Tsugumi flushed. "I don't need to know that bad. Besides, if he was picking up dinner at the convenience store he probably lives close by. There's a good chance we'll see him again."

Probably in the evening, after the pastries were discounted for the day.

But even so, it was another two weeks before she saw him.

-GC-

This time she spotted him first. His bleached hair made him easy to find, and she found herself a little glad that he had changed it back. He wasn't in front of the refrigerated buns like she expected though. He was looking over the prepared meals; sets of rice, fish, and pickled vegetables. Maybe he was feeling better.

She sidled next to him and said, "Did you like the croissant?"

To her surprise he merely looked up instead of jumping back. "I saw you coming this time. And it was okay."

Only okay? Tsugumi stopped herself short of an eye roll. She hadn't come over to fight.

"I want to apologize for giving you a hard time."

"I thought you already did that when you gave me the croissant."

"That for was that day. Now I mean for everything," she said. "Let bygones be bygones. After all, if you're still here that means the UN must have decided you're not a criminal, and if the GHQ is no longer around then that means you're no longer the enemy. You were only fighting us because it was your job, right?"

He hesitated, then said, "Right."

"I'm Tsugumi Sendou, second year student at Ryuuzaki High School." She held out her hand.

An odd spasm appeared to cross his face, and instead of shaking her hand he bowed, a more Japanese greeting than she would have expected. She thought he would have shook hands like Americans were supposed to.

"Daryl Yan, pilot at Meiji Construction and Recovery."

She let her hand drop to her side and he turned back to the packaged trays. He picked up one with cuts of mackerel and placed it in his basket.

"Daryl?"

"What do you want, runt?" He sounded exasperated, weary.

She fumed. "Why do you have to be so difficult? Can't you accept that someone might be trying to have a normal conversation with you?"

"I already accepted your apology, twice, and I gave you my name. What more is there?"

"You're not acting crazy."

"What?"

He pulled away into the center of the aisle, clearly ready to leave. Tsugumi could see the sullen boy from the festival, but not the Endlave pilot, especially not the crazy one that had tried to kill her. He was so... resigned.

"I'm ready to go too," she said, lifting her basket.

And to what she was sure was his consternation, she got into line to pay after him.

He probably could have ditched her if he ran as soon as he got out of the door, but to her delight she found him waiting a few steps from the entrance. Daryl Yan, huh. Maybe he was a puzzle worth solving after all.

"What else did you want to ask me?" he said.

"Which way are you going?" she asked.

He pointed and she said, "Great. Then we can walk together."

Daryl frowned. "Do you like forcing yourself on people?"

Tsugumi grinned and decided to ignore that question, but he started walking with her. She fished for something to ask him, since inquiring about his mental state did not seem such a good idea. But beyond their meeting at the school festival, they didn't have much in common except the battles between Funeral Parlor and the GHQ.

"So what was that barrier around your Endlave the last time we fought you?"

"Classified technology," he said, and that was it.

Clearly asking about GHQ tech was going to be a non-starter, though she dearly would have liked to know.

"So why did you come to Japan and join the GHQ?"

"Do you remember who General Yan was?"

She nodded. "He was the head of the GHQ before Keido."

"He was my father."

"Oh! I'm sorry."

So Daryl Yan was the son of General Yan. Tsugumi remembered him buying the buns the other day, how he said they reminded him of being with his family. She hadn't been close to the fighting when Funeral Parlor had tried capturing the general, but she knew that they hadn't been the ones to kill him. The official word she heard after the Loop 7 lockdown was that the general had died of a heart attack after being placed under arrest by the Anti Bodies.

She wanted to ask Daryl about his mother, but feared another misstep she would have to apologize for. She wasn't doing a good job getting him to talk.

"Daryl?"

"Hm?"

"Tell me about your job, your current one."

Tsugumi figured that should be safe. He said he worked for a construction company. Surely there could be no bloodshed and hard feelings in that.

"It pays the bills."

"But do you like it? You said you're a pilot right?"

"You make it sound like just being a pilot should be glamorous." He sighed. "I wish it was. It's not very fulfilling, but it's not like I have a lot of options."

"Can't you use your connections in the military to get something better if you don't like it? Go back home and be a soldier there?"

He suddenly stopped, and at first she thought it was because she had annoyed him by talking about his time in the GHQ again, but they were at an intersection and he pointed off to the left.

"I'm going that way," he said.

And her road continued straight on. He turned to leave without even saying good-bye.

"Hey!" she said.

He looked over his shoulder. She could see the aloof expression he gave her, as if she was just another irritation. He really did not know how to take a nice thing when he got it.

"This Sunday, when I don't have school, let's go somewhere for lunch. I know a good curry place and you might want to eat something besides all that prepackaged food one of these days."

He looked away and then said, "Fine."

"Then give me your phone number."

Daryl turned around and dug out his phone. He held it up to hers and the LEDs flashed at the exchange. Daryl Yan. She could see his name on the display now. Tsugumi smiled.

"Is that it?" He pocketed his phone and looked at her as though waiting to be dismissed.

"At noon on Sunday," she said.

"Sure."

* * *

_For purposes of this story, I'm assuming there was a cover-up regarding General Yan's death. The anime never addressed it, probably because the characters involved had other things to worry about, but I'm pretty sure the death of the head of the GHQ should have been big news, and news that couldn't go public because his death was part of a coup. While Keido and the Anti Bodies wouldn't be able to hide his death, they likely would have covered up the real reason behind it to avoid public panic and alerting the UN._


	5. Chapter 5: Lunch

Chapter 5: Lunch

Daryl woke with a jolt, heart racing, still in the dregs of a nightmare. He remembered his mother reaching for him, arm covered in the lavender crystals of the Apocalypse Virus. Her face had been kind, smiling, like it was his birthday, but her touch would only offer death. Vaccines were not enough. He could only make sure he never got infected. He couldn't take her hand, no matter how much it meant to him. He...

He hadn't dreamed about her in a long time.

His room was still dim, sunlight peeking around the edges of the curtains. Daryl rolled over and saw a light from his phone. Someone had left him a message. He picked it up and noted the name. Tsugumi Sendou. It was Sunday, wasn't it.

She wanted to remind him that they were meeting for lunch at noon and suggested they eat at Yappari Curry. It was nearby in Akasaka. If she didn't hear back, she would assume that their lunch was still happening and she would be waiting for him there.

He was not entirely sure why he was going. But he got up. It was something to do, something other than staying home and staring at four walls. He'd had more than enough of watching TV.

The trip to Akasaka was only a short subway ride away, and the directions on his phone looked simple enough, which was of some relief when the first drops of rain began to fall. It was only a light drizzle, but the weather forecast predicated heavier showers in the afternoon. Tsugumi had chosen a splendid day to meet for lunch. At least he had not left unprepared.

Daryl popped open his umbrella and held it above him in one hand as he held his phone for directions in the other. It wasn't long before he spotted the restaurant, its signage being a garish pink in neon lights over an orange and red background. He could spot some of the diners inside. It didn't look too crowded. And there, under the awning with a folded umbrella in hand, was the runt.

She spotted him and waved as though she thought he could somehow miss her. He smirked. Well, she _was_ short.

"Hey!" she said. "You look like you're having a good day."

"Decent," he said.

"Shall we go inside?"

They placed their umbrellas in the basket inside, and a waitress took them to a table in the back. She left them with a couple of menus full of pictures of the different dishes. It was one thing that Daryl liked about Japanese eateries in comparison to American ones. They made a big show of what the dishes looked like. Almost everything had a picture.

"Do you know what you want? It's raining so it's a good day for curry." Tsugumi gave him a catlike grin, and for a moment he could imagine that if she still had that cat tail on it would be viciously twitching.

He glanced down the menu. There was a lot of curry, with a choice of noodles, rice, and various toppings. "What are you getting?" he asked.

"Rice omelet with shrimp! Medium-hot." She showed him where it was on the menu; rice pilaf wrapped neatly in egg with three fried shrimp on top and lying alongside a pool of brown curry.

He turned over the menu and saw they had some noodle dishes on the back. "I'll get this."

Squid and cod roe over spaghetti.

Tsugumi frowned, a childish sulk on her face. "We're at a curry restaurant and you order the dish without curry?"

"I wasn't the one asking for curry, or to meet up for lunch." But he smiled teasingly. She was so easy to rile. "So what did you want to talk about, runt?"

"Who said anything about talking?" She turned away. "I just thought you might want to eat something better than convenience store food."

"I do, so thanks, for that."

She stared at him, at first with suspicion, which gradually melted into surprise when he said nothing to retract his gratitude. There was something appealing in having thanked her, not in the least the look on her face. Maybe he could get used to being nice, though there was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that told him that Rowan probably had not meant for Daryl to continue deriving enjoyment from another's discomfort. But he liked it.

"You're strange," she said, and then their server came to take their order.

Tsugumi merrily ordered her deluxe shrimp curry, asking for a boiled egg on the side, and rolled her eyes as Daryl requested his spaghetti. A minute later they had mugs of tea between them and they could hear the rain outside on the street. It was heavier now.

"We got lucky," said Tsugumi.

Daryl nodded. "Yeah."

"We never fought you in the rain."

For someone who had forgiven him for being on the opposite side of the conflict, she sure liked bringing up that he had fought against her. Daryl frowned.

"I'm glad," he said finally. "Endlaves are terrible in the rain. If Funeral Parlor..."

He stopped himself. He wasn't trying to goad her. Hell, he was trying to be friendly. She didn't need to know that he thought Funeral Parlor was moronic for not attacking during the rain, when it would be slippery, and harder for the Endlaves to get traction on their wheeled feet.

Tsugumi studied him. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "And if we would have we could, but when you're the underdog, you don't always get to choose when to attack. Gai called us to strike when we had to, and we weren't going to wait around for rain."

Then Gai was stupid, and willing to take casualties he could have avoided. Funeral Parlor only had the one Endlave. Rain would have given their foot soldiers a better chance to avoid gunfire as the GHQ pilots struggled to compensate for the wet ground.

But Daryl held his tongue, and reached about for something else to say.

"So what did you do for Funeral Parlor?"

"Hacker, tactical support, and Endlave monitor all rolled into one." Tsugumi beamed.

"That's... a lot."

An underground organization like that probably couldn't have recruited easily though. She might have been the only one qualified, and they had probably been understaffed. Still, he had trouble imagining this girl as any type of command center. She had probably been for Funeral Parlor what Rowan had been for the Anti-Bodies, and at a far younger age.

She grinned. "Impressed?"

"A bit."

"Only a bit?"

She sounded so disappointed that Daryl could not help smiling.

"Only a bit."

"You're much nicer when you do that."

Confused, he asked, "Do what?"

"Smile."

He felt his face flush, but she continued talking as though nothing had happened.

"Since the GHQ release, each time I've seen you, you've always been sulking; frowning." She giggled. "Of course, you've still been doing that here, but now you've actually smiled. It's nice to see there's a human being in you."

Daryl sighed. "Of course there is a human being. What did you expect? An alien?"

"Maybe a robot," said Tsugumi, and she had to be joking.

-GC-

Their food arrived and Tsugumi bore down on her curry with such enthusiasm that Daryl wondered if she had missed breakfast. At his prompting, she told him about her life after Funeral Parlor, after the UN set up camp and rounded up the remains of the GHQ. There was little to tell her about his part in that. He was in confinement for a year, interviewed a lot, and all said and done, it had been a bizarre combination of nerve-wracking and boring.

Tsugumi's life was different. She had friends who were also teenagers, and apparently she was friends with the Funeral Parlor pilot who had taken his Steiner. After revealing that tidbit Tsugumi had the nerve to ask if he might still be angry about that.

It would have helped if he had been conscious when they stole it, so he could have at least fought for it, but someone had torn a hole into the trailer with his command pod. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened, but Rowan had told him he had been found unconscious and had to be carried to the hospital.

Still, he had to grudgingly admit that he had been enjoying this lunch, so he told her that he didn't care anymore.

"That's good," she said, and she nodded as if that had been the only answer he could have given.

He hadn't realized how young she had been when she had joined Funeral Parlor. She told him about how she and her friend Ayase had entered high school with assistance from someone called Kurachi from the Kuhouin Group, and that thanks to Shibungi from Funeral Parlor their education was paid for with a small stipend from the remains of that organization's war coffers.

"I also get a little money to pay for my apartment and food for the month," said Tsugumi, between mouthfuls of curry-soaked rice. "That way I can focus on my studies instead of having to work a job after school."

Suddenly their first meeting in the convenience store made some kind of sense. "Is that why you were so interested in getting discount pastries?"

"They're still not cheap enough," she said wistfully, "but every bit helps. If I'm really good at saving, then I can eat somewhere nice once a month like here." And she chomped down on a fried shrimp.

Daryl would not have qualified this place as nice. Not because the food was bad. If he was honest with himself he wouldn't mind eating here again, but it wasn't classy. It was the kind of place where he could look up and see parents eating with their kids because they knew the price was affordable. Nice would have implied a place with tablecloths.

"Are you full already?" she asked. "You still have some food on your plate."

"Just thinking." And he wondered if she was still hungry.

She was doing a good job polishing off the curry, but by the time she tucked away the bit last bit of omelet she leaned back and proclaimed, "I'm stuffed!"

Daryl finished the late bites of his own lunch as Tsugumi looked around the restaurant, peering past him towards the front of the establishment.

"It's still raining hard outside," she said.

"The subway platform isn't far. Unless there's a good wind, we should be all right."

"Are you going back home after this?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"We can walk together. Might as well if we're going the same direction."

He couldn't really argue with that.

Their server set their bill down on the table and Tsugumi reached for her purse.

"I got it," said Daryl.

She frowned. "Why?"

"I have a job and you don't, so enjoy it." He opened his wallet and set several bills down on the table.

"I'm perfectly capable of paying for myself!"

"Weren't you the one who told me that when someone does something nice for you, you should shut up and accept it?"

Tsugumi's mouth twisted. "When did I say that?"

He sighed. "At the school festival, where we first met. You shoved that red mass in my face. I couldn't even tell what it was from all that candy on it."

"Oh!" He could see her face light up with recognition. She smiled. "Can you tell me what was in it now?"

He grinned. "A small runt of an apple."

The look on her face was worth it. He had paid for lunch so she couldn't get terribly mad, even though she shot him occasional dark looks at they walked home. Rowan had never told him that being nice to people also gave him greater license to torment them. Despite any hurt, real or pretend, when they parted at the same intersection from a few days before, Tsugumi told him that she was glad he was feeling better.

Despite himself, Daryl had to admit that he was.

* * *

_Now we have an inkling about why Daryl is irrationally afraid of infection. There will be more on that later._

_The restaurant menu in this chapter is modeled after a Japanese curry and spaghetti chain in southern California (since the parent company is Japanese and it's geared towards an immigrant population I'm going to guess it's something they might serve in Japan). Japanese-style squid spaghetti really exists, and I think it's pretty tasty!_

_Lastly, I think I worked out my posting frequency of new chapters. There will be a new chapter roughly every Saturday night/Sunday morning depending on your time zone, and if my schedule allows, there will be a second chapter released in the middle of the week sometime around Tuesday or Wednesday. I finished my writing for the non-fanfic project I mentioned in my Chapter 3 notes (yay!) so I should have more time to work on _Little Heart_. Crossing fingers in hope that I'll be able to do a midweek update this week!_


	6. Chapter 6: Stubborn

Chapter 6: Stubborn

"I don't know anyone who can 'accidentally' bake extra cakes but you," said Ayase, eying the racks of cooling white cakes in Tsugumi's kitchen.

Funell, Tsugumi's little robot companion, rolled about the floor, shuttling between the kitchen cabinet, the refrigerator, and the counter, putting away the unused ingredients. It had a contented bounce to its movement, as though it was truly happy to help. In Tsugumi's mind, she had programmed Funell to have a good temper, and so it did. Better than Tsugumi herself.

Tsugumi made a wry face as she glanced at the racks. "I added too much flour, so what else was I supposed to do? Baking is really just chemistry, so as long as I add the same proportions of everything else, I'll still have the right mix of dough. I just have to divide it up so it fits in the cake pans."

"Three cakes though?"

"That's why one is for you, Ayase." Tsugumi took out a container of vanilla frosting and set it down on the table in front of her friend. "You can add as much as you like."

Funell chirped in agreement.

Ayase eyed the frosting skeptically. "I don't think I can eat a whole cake by myself. Why don't you bring it to school?"

"Why?"

"Well, cakes are meant to be shared, aren't they? You're not thinking of eating two of them all by yourself, are you?"

Tsugumi studied the round cakes. They were a decent size and she could eat an eighth as a generous dessert. So two cakes would take her sixteen meals. Which meant that if she had cake once a day the last piece would be over two weeks old by the time she got to it. Tsugumi frowned.

"They're a bunch of pigs and won't enjoy it," she said.

She had no doubt her classmates would eat the cake, because who would turn down free cake? But she was always the strange girl of the classroom. She was the only person in the entire room who hadn't joined any clubs, and then no one really understood her disinterest in what they were learning. It was either too easy or she didn't care. Her classmates didn't know what it was like to live on their own, to fight for what they believed in. Their lives were so mundane compared to what she had been through.

Worrying about grades was justified, but a student was either prepared for the exam or not. A last minute "Do your best!" before the test came out didn't mean anything when doing one's best meant knowing the material well before. But they didn't know she had been a part of Funeral Parlor, where failure meant a lot more than a bad grade.

"Maybe give it to the neighbors?" said Ayase. "If you don't mind, I'd like to share mine with the first floor."

Ayase and Tsugumi lived in the same apartment building; Ayase on the first floor so she did not have to use the stairs, and Tsugumi up on the second. They had asked to room together, but there hadn't been any two bedroom vacancies on the first floor, and Ayase preferred to not rely on an elevator to get to her apartment. Still, at least they were in the same building.

"You can go ahead," said Tsugumi. "And maybe I'll share some with the others too."

"You're not going to wait until you're sick of cake, are you?"

Tsugumi grinned, a guilty smile. "I won't. Honest."

Funell cleaned the dishes and wiped down the counter. Tsugumi appreciated having a robot do the work for her. Of course Funell could do a lot more, but the apartment manager hadn't been happy when she accidentally shorted out the power to her apartment. At least she had accepted the explanation that Tsugumi had overloaded a power outlet with too many things plugged in, and not that she had hooked up a single robot to do some mass computations for her.

"I've got toppings," said Tsugumi, pulling out a bowl of strawberries sliced in half and a carton of blueberries from the refrigerator. "They were on sale."

"You must really be interested in treating yourself," said Ayase, picking up a spatula. She opened the frosting as Tsugumi set the fruit on the table.

"I have a little extra leftover this month," said Tsugumi with a smile. "Saved up." Thanks to Daryl, she thought. She only managed the price of the fruit with the money she'd saved not having to pay for her curry lunch.

On thinking of Daryl she realized that maybe he would like some cake. He didn't seem to have any friends, and he might like something fresh baked from scratch. Then again, he was a horrible tease, calling her a runt, as though the only defining characteristic of her was her height.

That weakling.

"Getting anything else?" asked Ayase. She had lathered frosting on a third of her cake so far.

"Yeah," said Tsugumi. "I'm gonna slice some apples."

-GC-

_Hey, where do you live?_ Tsugumi sent the text.

_Why? _said the terse reply.

Would he take a cake from her? It looked quite serviceable now, with the white frosting and slices of apple, the latter carefully soaked in lemon juice so they wouldn't brown, but she had a feeling he would not come and pick it up if she asked him to. She needed to corner him in way he could not refuse.

Which, she had to admit, sounded like a worthwhile endeavor, especially after that apple business at the curry restaurant.

_It's a surprise!_ she texted.

And she waited a minute, two minutes, but he did not reply. With a frown she pushed to call his number and held her phone up to her ear.

"What is it?" he said, his voice irritable. "I don't have a lot of time. My break is almost over."

On a Sunday?

She thought she had said that to herself, but Daryl replied, "Yeah, we're doing some overtime to make sure this block gets finished out by the deadline."

Tsugumi could hear the sounds of heavy machinery in the background, the beeping alerts of construction vehicles, and the crash of something heavy being moved. "Sounds really noisy over there."

"It's a construction zone. What would you expect? You know where the Mikasen Mall used to be? It's all gone now, not just the part that was crushed by the walls. We tore out the foundation too." She could hear someone yelling in the background and then he said, "Break's over. I gotta go."

He hung up and Tsugumi considered her options as Funell circled around her feet. She still had two cakes, having sent the third off with Ayase and covered with berries, and a part of her was just a little annoyed that after having made a cake just for Daryl he was at work and unable to take it. Of course, she hadn't made it just for him until after she decided to add the apples, but she found that part easy enough to ignore.

Tsugumi would just have to deliver it to him.

The Loop 7 reclamation was moving in a patchwork fashion based on who owned the old property and whether or not they had immediate plans to do anything with it. Mostly businesses moved in first, companies with the capital to set up a new office park, and then smaller shops and businesses sprouted around them to serve the people who worked there.

The streets Tsugumi walked were newly paved, and Funell rolled beside her, balancing a cake box over its head. More than one of the passersby looked at the curious robot which managed to follow its owner with nary a mishap. She wore a baseball cap to keep out the sun and it had the side benefit in that she could pull it down over her eyes and pretend that she didn't notice a thing. Of course it was a little strange to be going through town with a robot carrying a box, but if Funell wasn't carrying the cake then _she_ would have to, and then what would the point be of having a robot?

Eventually though, the street ended in a temporary construction wall with a sign asking for people to please stand clear. There was a gate in the middle of it, which Tsugumi walked up to. She carefully peered overhead to make sure there was nothing above her, and then looked inside.

"Hello!" she shouted.

The street continued ahead of her, leading deeper into Loop 7, and on either side she could see the pillars of new construction rising into the sky. It was not that loud over here, at least right now. Maybe Daryl was working further in.

A grizzled man in a yellow hardhat and dusty coveralls stamped over to her and said, "Please, miss, step back. This is a construction zone."

"Um..." She lifted the cake box from Funell and showed it to the worker. "I brought something for Daryl Yan. Can you ask him to pick it up?"

The man fumed, his face visibly darkening, and lifted his phone to his head. "Goto? It's Hatanaka. Send Yan out to the entrance. Some girl is here to see him." Then to Tsugumi he said, "He'll be here."

And he stamped off.

She waited several minutes before Daryl showed up, long enough that she set the cake box back on Funell because her arms were getting tired. He was wearing a hardhat, but oddly enough, not a neural suit. The latter wasn't necessary to pilot an Endlave. In a pinch one could do with only the helmet in the command pod. It's just the control wasn't as good without it, and then she realized that maybe he wasn't wearing one because the work was simple enough that it wasn't needed.

_ You make it sound like just being a pilot should be glamorous. I wish it was._

He had told her that, on their way home from the convenience store.

"What are you doing here, runt?" There was no playfulness in his voice this time, only irritation.

"Paying you back for lunch!" she said, which came out sounding more like a threat than bringing him a gift.

His expression darkened. "Look, my boss isn't happy with this interruption. We're behind schedule and most of us are here on what should have been a day off. If you're so insistent you can pay me back another time."

Tsugumi bit back a retort and said, "Okay, I understand this is a bad time. I'm sorry about that. But still, I made something for you and if you don't take it today it won't be as good tomorrow."

Daryl followed her gaze down and finally noticed Funell.

Tsugumi unwound a carefully knotted plastic bag and put the cake box inside so he would have something to carry it in. "This is for you," she said, holding it out to him. "It's vanilla apple. I know you're at work and you might not have a good place to keep it, but take it. I made too many so I wanted you to have one."

He looked at the outstretched bag, and for a moment she thought he seemed confused. Finally, Daryl sighed. "There's a shelf in the trailer by my command pod. I can put it there." He took the bag and said, "Thanks."

"You'll want to refrigerate it after you get home," said Tsugumi. "The apples will look nicer longer that way."

"What's with you and apples?"

"Me?"

"Apple candy, apple cake..."

She frowned. "Don't you have some work to get back to?"

"Fine, fine. I'll see you later."

Tsugumi watched him go. Though he probably should be in a hurry, she noticed that he took care not to walk too fast or swing the bag too hard. The frosting should be okay when he opened it later.

She did have a reply to his question, but couldn't bring herself to say it, because in her head it sounded so corny and she knew it would come out wrong.

_What is with me and apples? Nothing really. They make me think of you._

* * *

_Fruit is pretty expensive in Japan, probably due to being an island nation with limited room for agriculture. I'm not sure why I keep writing chapters with food. Maybe I was really hungry when I was outlining._

_As of this writing, about 90% of this story has already been outlined, save a chapter or two near the end, and the outline itself was largely written in two sittings. It helps tremendously for me to already know what I need to write before I sit down at the computer._


	7. Chapter 7: Wanting

Chapter 7: Wanting

Daryl tried not to think of the ribbing he got from his coworkers when he walked home that afternoon. They had laughed when he showed up with the cake box and asked if that was from his sister or his girlfriend, and they assumed because of his silence that she must be his girlfriend.

She definitely wasn't his sister, but he wasn't sure she was his girlfriend, let alone a friend at all. He'd never given much thought to dating. Some of his classmates at the academy had dated, but between his accelerated course load and being younger than his fellow cadets, there had not been much time or opportunity to allow it, and then once he was assigned to the GHQ, opportunity had vanished altogether.

He thought about what a relationship must be like when he remembered his father, how his father and his secretary had kissed in the elevator, how his father did not even stop his secretary from pushing the button to continue their trip down when Daryl saw them. The memory filled his mouth with bile.

His father had never told him he was seeing someone. And his secretary? Was the man simply going after the lowest hanging fruit available? His father had all but ostracized his mother until she finally died, and then he carried about in secret like he was having an affair. It was not conduct befitting a general. No, not befitting any decent human being.

The plastic bag at his side rustled, and Daryl realized it was because he was shaking. His hand, clenched around the handle of the bag, had turned white. He stopped walking and forced himself to breathe.

He did want a relationship of some kind. He realized that now, looking at the box of cake inside the plastic bag. But he didn't want one like this father's, one where it was hidden as though it was something indecent, where others were being shut out.

He didn't want to be his father.

This cake Tsugumi gave him. It was not a normal thing to give to someone, was it? Did it mean something?

He wondered if the secretary had ever made his his father cakes, if his mother ever had.

-GC-

_Would you like to come to my place for dinner this week?_

_Did a brick fall on your head at work?_

Daryl frowned at the message on his phone, uncertain if she was upset about his behavior when she had visited him at the construction site. He couldn't have helped that. The foreman had been pissed that he'd had a visitor so close to deadline.

_The cake was really good. I want to return the favor._

He sent that message and set the phone down. After getting home that evening he had tried a slice for dessert after dinner. It made him think of the skin of the candy apple after the candy had been removed; sweet and still tasting of fruit. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with an entire cake though. Tsugumi probably could eat the whole thing herself. Daryl figured he might bring some back to work for his coworkers the next day, though he knew they would tease him awfully for it.

His phone buzzed and he could see that Tsugumi had replied.

_Okay. Should I bring anything?_

Daryl thought about it and replied, _Not more cake._

They agreed on a night after school on a day he did not think he would be busy. Tsugumi would pick up some vegetables on her way home from school and bring them over since he would be doing the cooking. She said she didn't mind hanging around while he was getting everything ready. It was a good opportunity to make a joke about whether or not she had any cooking skills herself, but Daryl found he wanted her to come over, and did not want to risk the chance she would change her mind.

When Tsugumi arrived a few nights later, she had changed out of her school uniform into a white skirt and a teal knit top. She still wore the headband that resembled a pair of cat ears.

"Good evening," she said with a smile. She had the expected bag of groceries in her hands.

"Good evening," he said, and he stood aside to let her in.

She took off her shoes by the front door, and as she walked past he caught the scent of what must have been her shampoo. It smelled like spring.

"Did you clean right before I came here?" she asked, looking around the spartan living room a few steps in. She spotted the kitchen to her right and disappeared around the corner.

Daryl followed her to see Tsugumi set the plastic bag on the counter and take out its contents; ginger, green onion, bok choy, carrots. "It's always this way," he said. "I don't really make a mess."

She seemed to ponder that, and instead of a come back, she said, "I see. Do you mind if I take a look around?"

"Go ahead. I'll get started here."

He had nothing to hide, or, he privately added, anything he figured she could break. She meandered around the living room, which consisted of a small sofa, a TV, and his weight set. Tsugumi studied the weights for a moment, and then ambled up to the sliding door to the balcony.

Daryl turned away to open his cabinets and took out a large pan and a wok. Having her over was a good excuse to cook something instead of eating whatever was still at the convenience store.

Tsugumi peered into his bedroom and walked inside. He couldn't imagine that exploring his apartment would keep her entertained for long. It was only one bedroom and not that large.

Daryl washed the vegetables and set them aside one at a time on the cutting board. The carrots and boy choy could wait, so he placed them off to the side. He opened one of the drawers by the sink and pulled out a sharp knife.

"Can I help?" said Tsugumi, popping up beside him.

"Gah! Don't startle me. Are you trying to get stabbed?"

She gave him an impish smile.

He looked over at the pantry and said, "Over there, top shelf. Can you get the bottles of soy sauce and black bean sauce?"

Tsugumi frowned, but obediently went to the pantry and opened it. "You would ask me to get something off the top shelf, wouldn't you."

Daryl chuckled. "Well, you did ask if you could help. You can have a seat if you want. I can do this myself. I didn't invite you over here to make you work."

She glared up at the top shelf, perhaps gauging the distance her arms would need to reach, and then turned back to him. "I have a better idea." Tsugumi walked back to where he stood by the cutting board. "You can get the sauces and I'll cut the–"

Her hand touched his, the one with the knife.

Daryl recoiled. Before he fully knew what had happened, he had snapped his knife hand back, taken a step away as he angled the blade for retaliation, and then he caught himself.

Tsugumi jumped back, but it wouldn't have been effective, not if he hadn't recognized the situation first.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he very deliberately set the knife on the counter, careful to drop his hand to his side. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just... I don't like being touched."

She seemed to relax, a little, and said, "Is that why you always react so badly whenever I startle you?"

He thought of his mother, reaching for him, the virus destroying her body from the inside out. He shook. He couldn't talk to Tsugumi about that. It made no sense. A GHQ pilot afraid to trust the vaccine his organization developed?

"Can you... Can you just give me some space?" he asked.

Tsugumi looked him over, and he could not have hid his feelings well. He could see she was bothered. Her smile did not return, and her eyes turned away from his.

"I'll watch some TV," she said.

Daryl took out a filet of red snapper from the refrigerator and tossed it in the pan with the green onion and ginger. He made the sauce himself, put on the lid, and set the dish steaming as he tried not to look at the lonely figure on his couch, watching the TV. Maybe if the meal was good it would be enough of an apology.

The wok sizzled as he threw in the vegetables. He had purposely chosen to make Chinese food because it was the kind of meal that was meant to be shared. It was hard to cook a decent dish for one, and for the amount of work it might as well be for two.

"It smells good," she said, standing at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.

"Just give me a few more minutes," he said, and he added what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "If you want, the drawer with the chopsticks is over there, and the cabinet above it has the plates."

Tsugumi helped herself and when he looked up from his cooking he could see her setting the table. She had found the rice bowls as well, and when the rice cooker behind him popped, signaling that it was ready, she carefully slipped in behind him to fill them.

He stepped away from the wok to get the serving plates and spoons, and she slide into the space he had just left. It was a funny little dance, the two of them trying to get all the food ready, and he appreciated that she took care not to touch him. He set down the first serving plate and she emptied out the wok's stir-fried vegetables into it. Tsugumi picked it up and took it to the table, leaving him to fill the second dish with the steamed fish, which he promptly brought over.

She was already sitting, waiting for him to join her, before she smiled and said, "I almost expected we would be eating buns for dinner."

He sighed as he pulled back his chair and took a seat. "Dim sum is usually for breakfast, maybe lunch, but not for dinner, unless you're eating badly like me. Now give me your plate."

Tsugumi handed it to him, and Daryl cut out a slice of fish for her and added a helping of vegetables, which would have just a bit of a tang to them from the black bean sauce. He handed the plate back to her and then served himself.

When both their plates were full she clapped her hands together and said, "_Itadakimasu!_" thanking all those who had helped bring food to the table, which he supposed, included him.

"_Itadakimasu_," he echoed.

It was not something he usually said, even when he had been among the Japanese pilots in the GHQ. Even though he lived in Japan, he supposed he had never really become Japanese.

Tsugumi dug in, chopsticks busy. At least she seemed to be enjoying it. He thought of his cooking as only passable, but then maybe she didn't have much to gauge it against. It helped that the fish had turned out all right. That had been the one he was most worried about. It would have ended up too tough if he let it steam too long.

"How do you like it?" he asked.

"It's good," she said, swallowing a mouthful of fish. "I'm surprised. With all the ginger I thought it would have been more bitter."

Looking at the dish of steamed fish, one could only see that it was in a thin brown sauce with slices of green onion and ginger. Normally when Daryl made steamed fish he only added soy sauce in addition to the natural juices that would seep from the fish itself, but for Tsugumi, knowing that she liked sweet things, he had added a little sugar.

"I'm glad," he said, "that you like it."

* * *

To Moonfeather: Thanks for all the reviews! And yeah, Daryl is a bit of an ass. :)

I'm posting this chapter a little early this weekend because I have somewhere to go tonight. Hope you all enjoy!


	8. Chapter 8: Friends

Chapter 8: Friends

"I'll clean the dishes," said Tsugumi, as she got up from the table. "Since you went to the trouble of cooking it's the least I can do."

She was stuffed, truthfully, and would rather stretch out on his couch and sleep, but she wasn't going to impose herself that much. It had been a good dinner. She hadn't expected that Daryl would be a decent cook, not after seeing how much of that premade stuff he bought in the store. But she supposed making buns might have been a difficult skill set. She hadn't the foggiest idea how to get the meat inside them. Did one cook the meat first and then roll it in dough, or did it cook at the same time the dough baked?

"You don't have to," said Daryl, already picking up the dishes.

"Nay, I want to," said Tsugumi. She smiled. "But if you want to be a gentleman, you can put them on the counter by the sink. I promise I'll use very hot water and get them really clean for you."

She found the soap and sponge, plugged the hole at the bottom of the sink, and turned on the water.

"Are you sure?" said Daryl.

"Really sure," she said as she rolled up her sleeves. "You know, I wouldn't have expected this of you."

Daryl set the dishes on the counter. "The cooking? I told you I could do it."

"Not just the cooking. Paying for my lunch, inviting me to dinner. I'm surprised. You can be such a nice person. Why did you want to become a soldier for the GHQ?"

He had to have known what the GHQ had done, that what they fought for hadn't always been kind or fair. Funeral Parlor had done terrible things as well, but mercy was the prerogative of those in power. How they offered it, if they did at all, said what kind of organization they were.

Daryl shrugged. "Well, my father was the general..."

"But he didn't force you to become a pilot, did he? I mean, I don't know exactly how old you are, but you look like you could be in high school like me, and I don't think the United States normally enrolls high school students in the military."

The sink was full. She turned off the water and picked up the first plate.

"I'm eighteen," he said. "And you're right, it's not normal. I guess you can say I was scouted." He leaned against the closed door of the pantry behind her. "My father actually had little to do with it other than being his son allowed me to be at the right place at the right time for someone to see how I performed on a simulator. I had no training, I was just a kid trying to kill time, but they were impressed with my results and put in a request to train me as part of an experiment. I was thirteen. I could have said no, but I thought that if I did well enough, my father would be proud of me."

"He wasn't?" Tsugumi paused in her scrubbing.

Daryl laughed, a self-mocking sound. "He was never happy with me. Distant would be an understatement. If he noticed me he would get a strange look on his face as though he was surprised to see me, as if he had forgotten I was supposed to be around. When I was younger I was still naive enough to think that if I became a great Endlave pilot that he would be proud of me, and the program I was in accelerated my training. Most people graduate from the officer academy in four years. It's like college, and I did it in two. I was sixteen when I touched down in Japan as part of the GHQ. It shouldn't have been possible to have become an officer so quickly. My father... didn't care. Whatever I did, whatever accolades I won, it was never enough."

Tsugumi quietly lined up each dish on the rack as she finished, reluctant to break the silence.

Finally, she looked over her shoulder and said, "It's not my place to ask, but is he why you don't like to be touched?"

"Not really. Why?"

"It just seems... Well, I thought that he might have hit you when you were young, because of how you flinch when someone gets close to you without you seeing." She looked away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed."

"It's all right. I was part of the Disaster Response Bureau..."

"The Anti-Bodies."

"Right. Our job was to contain any outbreak."

It was worse than containment, but Tsugumi said nothing.

"Because of that," said Daryl, "we were constantly at risk of exposure to the virus. You know how viruses mutate over time. Their replication process is quick and dirty, allowing for more errors, a higher mutation rate, than in the genetic code of more advanced organisms like you or me. The Apocalypse Virus was especially creative in adapting itself. The GHQ was constantly updating the vaccine to try and head off the virus before it could get a foothold anywhere in Japan. But what if the newest strain we discovered was immune to our current vaccines? What if the vaccines didn't work? No one else rushed to the scene of a new virus outbreak like the GHQ and there was no guarantee that whatever we used would protect us. We were soldiers at risk of dying from something much more insidious than bullets."

"But you were an Endlave pilot," said Tsugumi, setting the wok on the dish rack. "You didn't have to go near the infected if you didn't want to. Even out in the field you could have stayed in your trailer."

Daryl was quiet a moment and then said, "I didn't have to go, but others did. They could have carried the virus back. It can be dormant for a long time, you know, and I didn't want to deal with it."

Tsugumi looked over her shoulder and though Daryl was staring off in the direction of his living room, she did not think he saw anything there. There was something else, something deeper than what he was saying. That reaction in the kitchen... It hadn't been an rational response. It had been laced with anger—and fear.

She scrubbed the large pan used for the steamed fish, the last dish to be cleaned, and rinsed it off before setting it on the rack.

"I'm done," she said, and she reached for a kitchen towel that hung from the handle of his oven to dry her hands.

He glanced at her, his reverie broken, and said, "Thanks."

Tsugumi studied him and asked, "Would it be all right if I touched you?" She held up her hands where he could see. "My hands are clean," she said. "Soap and hot water. I dried them with your own towel. There shouldn't be any viruses, Apocalypse or otherwise."

Daryl seemed to shrink back, though he didn't so much as take a step away from her. He looked down. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"I won't be surprising you this time, you'll see exactly where my hands are, and you're not holding a knife. Do you still think you might attack me again?"

He shook his head. "No, that's not it. I'm just..."

Afraid. He didn't say it, but as he trailed off their eyes met and she could see the fear. The Apocalypse Virus was gone now. He shouldn't be afraid of it anymore, but something was still there, holding him back.

"You don't have to," she said. She smiled as though it didn't matter, hoping to make him comfortable again.

"No," he said quietly. "I shouldn't be unreasonable. I shouldn't be afraid. You can, if you want. You can touch me."

Surprised, she looked questioningly at him and then said, "Okay, hold out your hand."

He held out his right hand, palm down, and she gently took it between both of hers. She could feel him shake, but he did not pull back. His skin was warm and his fingers strong as she wrapped them about her hand.

"You should at least manage to do a handshake," she said, trying to set his mind at ease. "It's part of the basics."

She looked up to see his expression; childlike in its sense of trepidation and wonder.

"It's not so bad, is it?" she asked.

"No," he breathed.

"I want you to know that if you ever need a friend, to please call me. It's not healthy to always be by yourself, without human contact. People aren't born to be alone."

Tsugumi released his hand. That would be enough for now. She did not think he could handle any more. Indeed, the hand she let go simply fell back at his side, but he was still watching her. She felt the heat rise to her face.

"That's... that's all," she stammered.

"I don't know how to thank you," he said.

"It was nothing," said Tsugumi, a little too quickly. "And you made dinner. Don't worry about doing anything more." She looked down, uncomfortable. "I was happy you invited me over, so try not to snap so much if I try to do something for you. You can be such a nice guy. I want to see him more often."

"That's the second time you've said that."

"Said what?" she asked, glancing up.

"That I'm nice."

Tsugumi shrugged. "Haven't you been?"

Daryl turned away and stepped out of the kitchen. Tentatively, she followed, and she could see from the tightening of his posture, the raising of his head, that any walls he had lowered around him had been pulled back into place.

"I'm not a nice person," said Daryl. "You just don't know me well enough."

"I know you were a soldier," said Tsugumi. "I know what that means, and that you might not have had a choice in the assignments you were given. It was the same in Funeral Parlor."

"It was _not_ the same!" His eyes flashed and then the anger abated almost as quickly as it had appeared. He looked away. "You won't want to be friends with me. I'm not the kind of person you would be happy to know."

Tsugumi set her hands on her hips and said, "Well, we won't know if we don't give it a try, won't we?"

He stared at her, as if in disbelief that she could be serious. "You don't know what you'd be in for," he said, his voice low. It could have been a threat, but Tsugumi didn't care.

"You're right, I don't. So let's try. If we can be friends, won't it have been worth it?"

"If we could..." Daryl seemed to consider, and sighed. "But if we can't...?"

"Quit being such a weakling!" said Tsugumi. "If it's my feelings that are going to be damaged, then it's my risk to take. And I'm beginning to think you're not half the awful person you think you are."

"Why's that?" His tone was clipped, skeptical.

She grinned. "Because you're worried that who you are will push me away."

"I don't understand you."

"You don't need to. Friendship isn't understanding why someone will be there for you. It's knowing that they will be." She held out her hand. "So let's give it a try."

Daryl gazed at her, from her face down to her hand, and accepted it. "All right. Let's give it a try."

* * *

_Daryl's not very good about letting people in. It was a lot of fun writing this chapter and the previous one. I had been waiting for it since I started the story since they finally get a relationship upgrade. It might seem odd for a romance fic to take eight chapters just to get to where the protagonists are friends, but I wanted to keep the relationship progression somewhat realistic and my personal feeling is that Daryl's Void, Kaleidoscope, was a reflective barrier for a reason._

_For someone who can be a crazy psychotic killing machine, his Void is not a weapon, but a _shield_. So I thought, why is that? As for why it reflects things, the theory behind that will be coming up in a later chapter. The Voids are gone, but the reasons they took the shapes they did still remain._


	9. Chapter 9: Vicious

Chapter 9: Vicious

They hadn't seen in each other in a couple weeks, but they sent messages and talked on the phone. She told him about school, about wanting something a little more involving. She talked about her friend Ayase, who had been Funeral Parlor's Endlave pilot. Tsugumi thought that Daryl would have something in common with her, since they had both become Endlave pilots while teenagers.

Daryl didn't talk much about work or what he did in his free time. It was more fun to listen to the kind of high school life he'd never had. He wished she would say something about clubs and what the other students were like, but she disliked both subjects. Instead she talked about other things; Funell, exams, the people in her apartment building. Preparing bentos for lunch was completely novel to him, and she told him about how she made a table of the week's meals in advance so she knew what to pack the night before.

She asked him questions sometimes, when she felt she had gone on too long herself, and he thought that maybe, somehow, this friendship would work out. Tsugumi asked, which meant she wanted to know, or said she did. But did she really?

Tsugumi did not know the real Daryl Yan. She thought he might have done things as a soldier, but she couldn't fathom what he had done under no orders at all.

Daryl opened the door to his apartment and turned on the lights. He noted with disgust the blood spattered on the leg of his pants. The cretin could have at least had the decency to keep his bodily fluids to himself. He supposed he would have to watch the passage of time better. Now that it was June, it wasn't long after sunset before the first drunks came out.

He could still feel how the cartilage in the man's nose gave beneath his fist. His hand hurt a little bit, but the pain was good. It had been a long time since the world had felt this visceral, this real. The drunk had no idea who he had run into, that he had picked the wrong person for a fight.

There was a part of him that knew what had happened was wrong, but everything about Daryl was always wrong, so it didn't bother him overly much. He was sick of having to bite back his temper. At work he would get fired if he was too belligerent, but on the street, late at night, there was no one to care.

He opened the refrigerator and set the bag of dim sum from the convenience store on an open shelf. Change first, then dinner. Daryl took a step out of the kitchen and then pulled out his phone to check if anyone had been trying to reach him. He saw a text from Tsugumi.

_Hi! It's been a few days since I heard from you. How are you doing?_

Daryl ran a hand through his hair and chuckled. She didn't realize what a loaded question that was tonight. He felt reckless, but good. She did say she wanted to be his friend, and Rowan had never stopped him from having his fun. Still, he didn't think she would approve.

He probably shouldn't have gotten into a fight anyway. It would be a bother if anyone traced the beating to him. Some bureaucrat might take it as a good excuse for deportation, just as Daryl was starting to get comfortable here.

He dialed Tsugumi's number and heard her answer. "Hi, Daryl," she said. "Did you just get home?"

"Yeah, but I ran into a drunk along the way."

"Oh. Hopefully he left you alone."

"Made me drop my bag of buns," said Daryl as he walked to his room. "They're still clean, being in their own container and then the plastic bag, but I was pretty upset."

"I can see why."

Sympathy. Daryl smiled. Maybe this wasn't so bad.

"I told him to apologize, but he didn't take that so well."

"I don't think you can expect a drunk to be reasonable."

"I didn't, but it would have saved us both a lot of hassle. He was completely outclassed and I gave him fair warning about it. He was just too drunk to tell. Or maybe he could and the animal part of his brain just couldn't accept it. It was dark and there was no one else around."

Silence.

"I let him throw the first punch." Daryl opened the door to his closet and rummaged around for a clean pair of pants. "But it was no contest really. He was too drunk to have any sense of balance. Worse than the freshest cadet in the army. He fell down like a sack of bricks. But you know?" Daryl grinned. "He still struggled."

"Daryl... Did you fight with him?"

He switched the phone to speaker and set it on his desk. "It wasn't much of one, more of a beating. He kept talking as though at any moment he was going to kick my ass." Daryl changed out of his old pair of slacks and laid them over the back of the chair by his desk, careful to keep the bloodstains away from the wood. "Of course, I would have had to let him stand for that, and I wasn't going to be a punching bag for such a miserable human being. I pretty much had to grind his face into the pavement until he shut up."

He pulled on the clean pair of pants and then noted that the line had gone silent. Daryl picked up the phone and held it to his ear. "Tsugumi, are you still there?"

"Aye..." she said after a moment. There was a shake in her voice. "What you did though... that sounds horrible."

"But Tsugumi, I enjoyed it. You can't believe how good it felt. It's like I was finally let out of a cage. I haven't had the chance to fight anyone in ages, and even though it was a crappy drunk I haven't felt this alive since I was in the GHQ. I know I shouldn't have done it, laws and stuff like that, but haven't you ever wanted to do something that you're not supposed to? You're a hacker..."

"Daryl..."

"I did want to ask you about something though. When I was in the GHQ and I needed a clean-up I could ask the staff, so I've never had to do this myself. What's the best way to remove bloodstains from your clothes?"

Click.

It took him a moment to realize that she had hung up, and it was not that their phones had accidentally disconnected. He tried dialing her number, but it only rang until it hit her voicemail.

So that was it. Daryl smiled, for a moment amused at his own hope that she would understand. Then he snarled and hurled his phone against the wall. So much for friendship.

-GC-

He walked to work in a foul mood the next morning. The pants were probably ruined. He had tried cleaning them last night using some steps he found online, but it would be his luck to discover that blood is one of the hardest things to wash out. Even though he got to it before it fully set, there were still traces of it he could not remove to his satisfaction.

Daryl did not feel much pity for those who had cleaned up after him before. Contact with bodily fluids was inevitable when dealing with sickness and disease on a daily basis, and those staff members had cleaned crap for everyone in the GHQ, not just him. But now that he had to clean for himself, he knew he would have to be more careful if he got in a fight again.

Still, he could remember the adrenalin rush, the thrill of completely dominating another person, the fear in the other man's voice when he finally realized what he had unleashed. The drunk had apologized in the end, though it had taken a few tries to him to say anything loud enough for Daryl to be sure of what he was hearing. Maybe the man had become sober enough to learn a lesson or two about how to treat people when drunk out of his ass.

But fighting someone again like that would be inconvenient. If Daryl kept doing it, he was bound to get caught, even if he made sure to let the other man start it.

His phone vibrated.

Daryl checked the name and saw it was an incoming call from Tsugumi.

He ignored it. After the call went to voicemail, his phone vibrated again. This time she left a text.

_Why bother?_ he wondered. He had screwed up, he got that. There was a line between what was socially acceptable and what was not, and he had been naive enough to think that being friends let him cross that. She had said she was willing to take the risk of getting to know him, and part of him was not a nice person. Part of him was still Kill-'em-All Daryl. Quite possibly, part of him always would be.

All he was really good at was fighting. What else was he supposed to do when his entire teenage life had revolved around training for and participating in combat? He had never been a high school student. He had never done any preparation for college or thought about getting a civilian career. From the moment he had entered the military academy, he had been trained to be a weapon, and he had never regretted it.

What he did now was merely existing. He couldn't keep working his construction job forever. He'd go mad first. If only re-enlisting was an option... He'd take anywhere. Eastern Europe. The Middle East. Africa.

PMC.

He heard someone say that as he got on the subway. It was just a snatch of a conversation, and he completely missed the rest of the context. The letters might have meant something entirely different from what his mind immediately jumped to, but it didn't matter. The acronym was like a light shining through a gloomy sky.

Private military company.

It was a natural fit. There would be no ranks or medals, no large scale military operations, but he didn't need any of those if one would just give him a chance to fight. Daryl had never cared about the causes people fought over. Going mercenary would be fine with him. But PMCs would be unlikely to have access to Endlaves.

For a moment it was enough for Daryl to lament that all his combat experience had been as a pilot, and that he had only really had one year of active service to put on his resume. But still, his record for that one year of service was good, barring the single insubordination when ordered to protect Gai Tsutsugami, and he thought he might be able to defend his actions given what the man had been trying to do. Outside of that, Daryl had kept himself in good physical shape since his detainment and subsequent release, and he had scored well as a marksman on his old tests.

There was just one thing...

Daryl tried to put Tsugumi out of his head, but her face kept popping in, even as he worked up the anger to hate the distance she had put between them. He should stop seeing her, ignore the phone messages. Eventually she would understand that he was no longer interested in communicating and go away, or he'd ship out somewhere first. No one could be friends with a person like him anyway. He had been molded into a soldier and this civilian life was just a farce.

A soldier didn't stop at convenience stores for buns late after work.

* * *

_Alas, Daryl's hair-trigger temper has hardly gone away. He's managed to suppress it so far, because he's had to, but he's a pretty messed up guy and I don't think that part of him would disappear just because he's a civilian now. It's definitely something he and Tsugumi are going to have to deal with._


	10. Chapter 10: Broken

Chapter 10: Broken

Tsugumi woke, cold despite the June weather. Her sheets had fallen to the side of the bed and the morning sun was bright. She was still clutching her phone.

_That weakling_... she thought as the events of the night before came back to her. Was he trying to play her or was he really that thick-headed? He had hurt someone, and it shouldn't have mattered whether the other person was drunk or not. Daryl should have walked away. He had to have known better.

_I let him throw the first punch._

No, Daryl had known better. That was why he had made sure he was not the first to attack, so that if anyone had seen the start of the fight he could claim self-defense. He might have been spoiling to hit someone, but he hadn't been without his wits. That made the whole thing... scarier.

Tsugumi got up and looked stupidly at the phone in her hand, as though it shouldn't have been there. Maybe she shouldn't have hung up on him, but he had been pushing so hard, as if he didn't care what she heard, what he said, as if he wanted to test the limits of what he could get away with. She wondered if this was how he intended to give up on a friendship that had barely started.

She opened her phone and called up the police blotter online. Most of the night had been quiet. This was not a particularly dangerous neighborhood, but there was still something reported about midnight last night. A man had been found beaten in an alley and taken to a hospital. The details were light, all she knew was that he had sustained multiple injuries, and she thought of the things Daryl had said, how he had grinded the man's face into the pavement. And then he had the nerve to ask about how to clean off blood.

What kind of a response had he expected of her?

Tsugumi got dressed and brushed out her hair. She thought about how she had held his hand, how he had agreed to give friendship a try. He had seemed sincere. He hadn't liked being touched, but at the end of the night he had taken her hand on his own.

It didn't make sense. The boy who bought her lunch, who made her dinner, also beat a man so badly he got blood on his clothes.

She set her headband in her hair, careful to angle the ears just right, and sighed. Tsugumi could see Daryl's reaction with the knife again, the expression on his face before he realized what he had done. She hadn't said anything, but it was vicious, like there was no possible option but for him to fight. Maybe the drunk had touched him, and Daryl hadn't been able to stop himself. But then, he said he had enjoyed it.

With a groan she realized that making excuses for Daryl was only going to make her feel like she was running around in circles. The best thing would probably be to talk with him again, maybe after he had some time to calm down, and this time she would be ready. The stuff said he said last night had come out of nowhere, but now she was prepared, she knew what had happened. And maybe it wasn't as bad as it initially sounded.

Tsugumi dialed his number as she walked to the kitchen. A small pile of individually wrapped rolls and pastries sat on the table. The phone rang and rang as she pondered which one she should eat for breakfast and she settled on the pineapple bread.

Her call went to voicemail.

She supposed given the time he was probably on the way to work, maybe he was already there. Construction jobs started early, didn't they? He wouldn't want her to harass him like last time.

Tsugumi set him a text. _Can I come over after you're done with work? We can talk._

There was no immediate reply, but she didn't expect one.

-GC-

By lunchtime Daryl still had not replied to her. She didn't like this feeling. It was not the first time he had taken so long, but most of the time she could chalk to it up his job. Today, even though he was working, she had the feeling that if he really wanted to, he could have found a moment during his break to send something to her. By not replying, he was essentially telling her "No."

"Can piloting an Endlave make someone crazy?" she asked.

Ayase looked at her from across her desk. Tsugumi had borrowed the seat of the person in front of her during lunch and turned the chair around to face her friend.

"Not any more than driving a car would," said Ayase. "It's just another vehicle."

Tsugumi fidgeted and set her bento on Ayase's desk. "But you don't drive it like a car. You have the neural link. Pilots can get hurt if their Endlaves are too damaged. We always worried about you."

"More than you should have." Ayase frowned and dug her chopsticks into a bento compartment full of soba noodles. "It does hurt when the Endlave gets damaged. The body thinks an arm, a leg, a chest, has been crushed when the connection to the mechanics of the Endlave is destroyed, but the nerves themselves are still there. The brain just gets tricked. That's why we can usually recover afterwards. The brain eventually realizes everything is okay. But just because your brain gets tricked doesn't mean you're going to go crazy in other ways. The worst is that the nerves shut down for real. That's where the danger is."

That was why Tsugumi had been so careful to bail out Ayase whenever her Endlave had been at risk of destruction. The body might be physically fine, but the brain could be convinced otherwise. It was sometimes possible for pilots to still function in horrifically maimed Endlaves, but recovering from such an ordeal was no guarantee. Pilots could die, and it was harder to replace a trained pilot than an Endlave.

That was the whole point behind the wireless link, so the pilot could operate from a physically remote location while the Endlave was the only one in immediate danger. If the Endlave risked destruction, the cardinal rule was to save the pilot.

"Are you worried about someone?" asked Ayase.

Tsugumi flushed. "What?!"

"I haven't been in an Endlave in over a year, and I'm not likely to again now that there is no longer a need for Funeral Parlor. I mean, I'd like to go back to doing something like that, but..." Tsugumi understood. The wheelchair made things difficult. Not everyone would be as accommodating as Funeral Parlor to take a pilot who couldn't walk. "It's not a good idea for me to be stuck in the past anyway," said Ayase, "and I want to have something else that I can do as well as anyone."

"You're right," said Tsugumi. "I'm worried about someone. It's that pilot. The crazy one." But though she called him crazy, she found that difficult to accept. The word sounded empty, hollow, to her.

Two months ago she would have agreed. Two months ago she would not have thought twice if he told her he had beaten a drunk in an alley. But two months ago she didn't know he got homesick. Two months ago she didn't know how afraid he was of touching another human being. Two months ago she hadn't seen him smile.

"You saw him again?" said Ayase.

"A few times," said Tsugumi, reluctant to reveal more. "His name is Daryl Yan. I started talking with him. He's a little rude and obnoxious sometimes, but other times he's been civil, even nice. But then he got a little crazy last night... Nothing directed towards me," she added hastily, seeing Ayase's anger stir. "And I'm trying to figure out why he keeps swinging from being a nice person to talk to and this awful person I don't want to know."

Ayase sighed, and let the silence stew.

Finally she said, "Maybe you should just avoid him. I know that's hard when you go to the same store, but sometimes a person gets damaged after too much fighting and they're not the same anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if this Daryl Yan is somehow broken. You hear about it sometimes, the soldiers who come back from a war zone and then in the middle of the night, even though they're safe in bed, they wake up screaming and think they're under siege."

Tsugumi tried to picture that, and could not reconcile the image in her mind with the voice over the phone. Daryl had seemed aware of what had happened, and hardly distressed about what he described. He hadn't sounded like someone trapped in a hallucination he could not control.

"He didn't sound afraid or upset," said Tsugumi. "Just..."

"Crazy?" Ayase set down her chopsticks and looked Tsugumi in the eyes. "Like when we were attacking the GHQ headquarters?"

That monster who had blocked their way... That pilot with the psychotic laughter... had been Daryl.

"No, not quite like that..."

_What's the best way to remove bloodstains from your clothes?_

The candor with which he had asked, knowing it was another man's blood, a man who wouldn't have been bleeding if he hadn't fought with him... Why didn't Daryl make sense? Was he really broken? Did he just snap at times and there was no way to know which Daryl she would be speaking to?

"You should start on your lunch," said Ayase, "or the break will be over before you know it."

Tsugumi sighed loudly and opened her bento. Onigiri with tuna in the middle, and a side compartment of broccoli. "Aya, do you think it's possible to fix someone who's broken like that?"

"I don't know," said Ayase. "I guess that's what a psychologist is for, but I'm not sure every person is fixable. Besides, we don't really know what's wrong with him, or if anything is at all. Maybe Daryl Yan just has a horrible mean streak that surfaces every now and then and it has nothing to do with having been a soldier at all."

Tsugumi found that infinitely worse than the thought of Daryl being broken, that what he was, was simply normal. She chewed on her onigiri. Bites went in her mouth and her jaw moved, but the action was far too mechanical to be enjoyed.

"I can see your brain spinning," said Ayase. "People aren't programs. You can't just evaluate what's wrong with them and install a patch that will make everything better."

"I'm not silly enough to believe that," said Tsugumi, "but I can't help thinking there's a reason Daryl is the way he is, and if I just understood that, I would understand him. I told him I'd be his friend, and I think he needs one."

Ayase sighed and her shoulders sagged. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, but I know you. If you said that, you meant it."

She had, hadn't she. Tsugumi's smile was hidden as she brought the rest of her onigiri to her mouth.

She didn't know what was wrong with Daryl, but if someone didn't tell him to stop being a maniac, then what would stop him from getting into another fight, maybe one where both he and the other person were hurt? Someone needed to talk some sense into him, and that someone should be a friend.

Tsugumi remembered Daryl's reaction with the knife though, and decided that she should probably bring Funell for help. She didn't think Daryl would consciously attack her, but if she happened to be wrong, she didn't want to be the one who was broken.

* * *

_I probably shouldn't have done a mid-week update this week. I ended up cutting it close to the regular weekend update. But the reason was mostly because I took two days off from writing to finish outlining the rest of the story._

_I already had 80% of _Little Heart_ outlined, but the last 20% was just a muddle of ideas and notes, so what I did was organize it into chapters. I'm not sure that I mentioned this before, but the odd chapters are from Daryl's point of view and the evens are from Tsugumi's, so when I lay out the story I try to have the most important person for that particular scene be the POV character._

_This has sometimes changed during the outlining process and as a result I've reshuffled events or added new scenes to make sure the right person lines up for the right scene. This is one reason I outline. It's much harder to do once the story is written, but I can flip things around in outline form before the posted story gets that far. For instance, the upcoming Chapter 11 was originally scheduled to be a Tsugumi chapter and the Chapter 10 that you just read did not exist!_


	11. Chapter 11: Permission

Chapter 11: Permission

Ironically, work was almost bearable today, and had not kept him late. Daryl skipped getting a premade dinner at the convenience store and settled for grilling some chicken he had in the refrigerator and steaming some rice and cabbage to go with it.

This felt more like real food, and he ate it noisily as he browsed online for a PMC to apply to. Once he had a name of prospects, he'd contact some of the soldiers he used to serve with, and see if they could offer a recommendation, either on his behalf or for the company he would apply to. He didn't want to end up in some half-ass operation.

His dinner was long finished by the time he heard the doorbell ring, but Daryl was still sitting at the dining table making his notes on who he wished to follow up with. He disliked the interruption, but the doorbell rang again, so his visitor was plainly insistent on seeing him.

Daryl muttered a curse and walked to the door.

He peered through the peephole, but couldn't see anything. And yet, as he stood there, the doorbell rang again. Who was on the other side? Some kid so short he couldn't be seen? Even the runt wasn't that tiny... A person would practically have to be lying on the floor to hide from him.

Daryl opened the door, and to his surprise a small robot about the size of a football wheeled its way into the gap. It planted itself on the floor and two of its legs reached out, grabbing the door and the frame, and before Daryl fully recognized what had happened, it had staunchly wedged the door open. He couldn't close it with the robot in the way, and when he tried to shove it with his foot it wouldn't budge.

With a grunt he turned around to get a broom, something that would give him enough power if he swung it just right.

"Daryl?"

He looked over his shoulder and saw Tsugumi through the door, now wedged fully open by the robot, that had taken advantage of his departure. She was still in her school uniform and wearing those ridiculous cat ears.

"That's your robot, isn't it," he said, now remembering where he had seen it before. It had been under the cake box.

The robot whirred and retracted its legs, but remained planted between the two of them. Tsugumi caught the door, propping it open with her hand.

Daryl stiffened. "Go away. I didn't say you could come."

"I read about the beating online," said Tsugumi. "I thought you might want to know the man is expected to survive."

"Don't talk about that kind of thing with the door open."

She took a step forward and the robot moved with her.

"I said to go away!" he snapped. He took a step towards her, but the robot suddenly sprang up, legs extending so that its body was squarely in his path. "Get yourself and your robot out of here!"

"No." Tsugumi shut the door behind her. "I told you I was going to be your friend, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you do something stupid."

The expression on her face was stern, her mouth drawn into a tight line. He would have been amused if not for the bobbing robot between them.

"I don't have to ask your permission to do what I want. I warned you that I wasn't the kind of person you wanted to know, and judging from your reaction last night I wasn't wrong."

"That wasn't you."

"That _is_ me." He planted a hand on the head of that stupid robot and shoved it to the side. But Daryl did not take another step towards her, even as her mechanical companion scrambled back on its legs. "You keep thinking I'm a safe person to be around because I occasionally buy you a meal, but I have news for you. I'm not. I was part of the GHQ's Anti-Bodies. Funeral Parlor was always accusing us of atrocities, and you know what? Not all of that was following orders."

He heard a whir beneath him and looked down just in time to see the robot hurl itself into his gut. Daryl staggered back and Tsugumi said, "Down, Funell! Move to stand-by defense."

"You brought your stupid robot with you," Daryl wheezed. "It's playing guard dog. You really think I'll hurt you." He grinned, but he could see from the tightening of her face that his expression had not reassured her in any way.

Good.

"I'm going to quit my job," he said. "A person like me needs to be fighting, so I'm going to make it my career again, and you won't have to worry about me doing something stupid. Next time will be an approved target instead of some random drunk on the street."

"I don't think that's a good idea." They were only a few feet apart from each other, and Tsugumi risked a step forward.

"Why not?" he demanded. "I was a soldier!"

"_Was_," she emphasized.

Daryl growled and balled his hand into a fist. "If it wasn't for you I still would be!"

Surprise colored her face. She hadn't expected that. Of course not. She hadn't known that he'd been relieved of duty for his stupid attempt at saving her life, that if he hadn't done such a thing he could have claimed ignorance of what he'd done as part of the Anti-Bodies, that he might not have been discharged with an OTH.

"You didn't know, did you," he said, pressing the attack. "Do you remember the first time you saw Gai Tsutsugami after the lockdown? You ran up to him, but he wasn't your leader anymore. We, the GHQ Endlave pilots, were ordered to protect him, and one of them threatened you for getting too close."

"And another stopped it," said Tsugumi, recognition dawning. "The pilot called me 'runt' and I was pretty sure it was you, the boy from the festival."

Daryl huffed. "I was jailed for that bit of insubordination. And thanks to that, the UN knew that I wasn't blindly following orders, that I had a very good idea that something was wrong in Japan and I had done nothing to report back on it. The US Army discharged me, and I can't go back."

"But you just said you were going to fight again..."

"There are still PMCs."

She blanched. Let her. There was nothing noble about being a mercenary.

"Daryl," she said, "why do you want to keep fighting? I know you don't like your job, but aren't you afraid of getting killed? It's one thing when you're working for the government, but when you're just working for a living..."

"It doesn't matter. I was supposed to die anyway." He glared at Tsugumi. "I wanted to. You and your friend Ayase were the ones who were supposed to kill me. I _should_ have died as Kill-'em-All Daryl, but the man monitoring me was soft-hearted enough to bail me out." He chuckled. "Maybe you'd like to finish the job? I won't–"

Before he could finish Tsugumi called out, "Funell!" and pointed at him, and the blasted robot hurtled into him again. This time it struck him in the ribcage hard enough that it took him a moment to realize he was now lying on the hardwood floor.

"I'm sorry," said Tsugumi, coming to stand over him, "but we aren't enemies anymore. I don't want to hurt you."

"You seem to be doing a good job of it," he groaned.

"I want you to shut up and listen to me."

She knelt down beside him and he didn't bother getting up. The Funell robot was sitting on his aching chest anyway.

"You keep trying to show me what an awful person you are," said Tsugumi, "but that doesn't erase everything else you've been. And I think your monitor knew that, because I know a thing or two about bailing out an Endlave pilot."

Daryl snorted and stared at the ceiling.

"Listen to me," said Tsugumi, her voice impatient. "You pilots, you like pushing yourselves, as if staying in your Endlave is the only difference between victory and defeat. Most monitors will only bail out when the pilot's life is in danger since it is otherwise up to the pilot's judgment to sever the connection. A monitor who cares will bail the pilot out sooner, when they are damaged, when they are afraid the pilot might not live even though they are far from dead.

"Daryl, you were one of the final guards at the GHQ headquarters, and if they gave you that crazy Endlave you must have been one of the best they had remaining. I am sure your commanders would have let you fight to the death for them. That someone bailed you out, meant that they cared more about you than the GHQ."

"He's dead," said Daryl.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He died saving my life, and that was his own worthless decision."

"I'm pretty sure he didn't die so you could throw yourself back into the nearest war zone."

She sounded so self-righteous, but she hadn't known Rowan. The man had worn his heart on his sleeve, but that didn't mean he couldn't follow orders, even if it meant betraying the general he was supposed to serve. Daryl knew that Rowan had been in on the coup against his father, and while Rowan had not pulled the trigger, he would have if that had been the assignment given.

"He wouldn't have cared if I stayed in the military or not," said Daryl, shoving Funell off his chest and sitting up. The robot bleeped, but did not attempt to climb back on. "He was part of the Anti-Bodies too. Don't pretend you knew him."

Her mouth pulled into a line. "I don't need to. The fact he died for you meant that he wanted you to live! And... I want you to too."

Daryl grunted as he clambered to his feet. "Fighting is what I do best. It's what I was trained to do. Neither of us can change that."

"But there's more to you than the soldier. You surprised me, you know, when you paid for lunch at Yappari, and when you invited me over for dinner." He could hear her stand up behind him. "I thought I had found a friend, and now that I have, I don't want to lose him."

"I'm not worth your friendship, and clearly you don't care enough either since you hung up on me."

He meant to walk to the door when he felt a movement behind him. Daryl whirled around and yelled, "Don't touch me!"

"I didn't," she said quietly, though her arm was extended, close by. "And I won't without your permission, but I'm here, and I meant it when I said I'd be your friend. That's why I came. Friends can make mistakes. I may have made one last night, and you may have as well, but friends forgive each other and move past that. Do you think I've never had a fight with Ayase or anyone else?"

He'd never thought about it. He didn't understand really. He thought people were friends because they got along, they found each other's company pleasant. If they fought, then why would they be friends? Allies, maybe. He understood putting aside differences in a military context.

"Daryl?" she asked.

Tsugumi's voice was tentative, and even he could see the concern coloring her face. His heart beat loudly in his ears.

"You can," he said gruffly. "You can touch me."

As she came up to him, she looked up into his eyes, inquiring, as though she really wasn't sure whether she could believe him. She was too close. Far too close. He thought she had meant to take his hand again, but instead she slid her arms under his and pulled him into a hug.

Tsugumi rested her head against his chest. "Weakling," she sighed. When he looked down he just saw the top of her head and her cat ears headband. Her embrace was tight and he soon became uncomfortably aware that though she looked fairly flat-chested, she was definitely female. His heart beat madly, and she had to know it.

"I think," said Tsugumi, "that you were trained so early that you didn't learn how to be nice to other people. Being a friend is giving without expecting anything in return. When I think about it now, I understand why you paid for lunch, why you invited me to dinner, but you don't have to repay me for anything I give you. If I'm kind, it's because I want to be, not because I want something from you."

"Tsugumi..."

He wanted to stay like this, to feel her so close to him, but the moment felt so fragile he feared it might break. So he did nothing, but accept the kindness he did not know how to return.

"Please stay," said Tsugumi. "Don't join a PMC."

His anger gone, Daryl said, "Okay."

* * *

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter. It feels like it's been a long time coming. As I mentioned earlier, this chapter was originally intended to be written from Tsugumi's point of view, but I thought it would work better from Daryl's. It gives a different mood than it would have from Tsugumi's._

_Slugging Daryl with Funell wasn't in the original outline, but I couldn't help it. Nothing like a robot tension breaker!_


	12. Chapter 12: Apology

Chapter 12: Apology

Tsugumi mostly remembered his heartbeat. She hadn't realized he would be so nervous, and she could hear how frantic it was with her head pressed against his chest. Though he was warm where she had hugged him, he had not placed his arms around her. It might have been a bit much to expect him to reciprocate. Considering that he did not like to be touched, there was a good chance her hug had been more human contact than he'd had in a long time, if ever.

The important thing was that in the end he'd said he would stay. She still wasn't sure what the word of Daryl Yan was worth, if he understood the weight she placed in it, but she didn't think he was the kind of person to back away from what he had said.

When she left his apartment, she decided to give him some space, and leave the next move up to him. At least if he ran away now she would know she had done everything reasonable to stop him. And if he left, well, maybe some things weren't meant to be. But she liked to think that he wouldn't.

So when he called her a few days later on a Saturday night and asked if she would like to meet the next day, she was happy to agree.

Daryl waited for her at the intersection between their apartments, shifting nervously on his feet as she approached. He was wearing a white and blue polo shirt and a pair of khakis, a nice relaxed outfit while the weather was still mild.

Tsugumi raised her arm above her head and waved at him. "Hello!"

He smiled and waved back, though for him, it was a far simpler wave; arm bent at the elbow and hand at about shoulder height. Still, he smiled, and this time it had none of the maliciousness she had felt before. It was almost pleasant, though there was still an uneasiness to it that she could not quite figure out.

She did not think that the demons haunting him had been banished, but at least for now he was the Daryl she had come to know, and not the monster who had piloted the Endlaves against her and Funeral Parlor.

"What did you want to do today?" she asked.

"Would it be all right if we just walked for a bit?" he said. "We can grab lunch after. If you're okay with it."

There was a melancholy note to his voice and she hoped he wasn't having second thoughts.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"No, no," he said quickly. "I've just been doing a lot of thinking. Can we...?" He motioned for them to start walking.

"Okay."

She let Daryl lead. Though he was never more than half a step in front of her, and did not appear to be in any hurry, she got the feeling he had a certain place he wanted to go. Whenever they came to an intersection, he did not hesitate to turn the corner or to walk up to the crosswalk and wait for the signal.

They did not talk much. Tsugumi did not know where to begin, and Daryl plainly had something on his mind. Their attempts at conversation consisted of a handful of false starts to the point that Tsugumi stopped trying, and decided that just walking would have to be enough. But then Daryl stopped and said:

"Do you remember this?"

Tsugumi looked up to see a park by the airport, more specifically, _the_ park, where she and Daryl had met following his release by the UN. There were still planes taking off in the distance, but she knew few if any of them now carried people who had once belonged to the GHQ. That exodus was over. Those who had wanted to go, had gone, and those who had chosen to stay...

She looked at Daryl, and was surprised to see how peaceful he looked, his purple eyes watching a large passenger plane as it turned out to the east, no doubt on its way to someplace in the Americas, maybe even to Daryl's home country. The wind, free from the confines of the skyscrapers, was strong here, and blew through his hair, but Daryl did not seem to notice.

"Do you miss America?" she asked.

"Not really," he said. "It's a place I know, but it's such a huge country. I never lived anywhere more than a few years. We moved so often to keep up with my father's work. Every time he was posted to a new station, my mother and I followed. I was ten when I first came to Japan."

Ten. That explained why his Japanese was so good, if he had started learning that young.

"I didn't stay," said Daryl, "I moved back to the US for training when I entered the academy, but I came back as soon as I finished. And since then... I haven't left."

"Do you like it better here then?"

An odd smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. "I... I would like to think so. Tsugumi... There's something I want to share with you."

She opened her mouth, but the word did not quite come out. What?

"It's sort of an apology from me, for being the way I am. I know there's no logical reason anymore, but old reflexes die hard and..."

"It's okay," said Tsugumi. "You don't need to rush to tell me. Take your time."

Daryl looked down. "My mother... died to the Apocalypse Virus after we came to Japan. This was four years after the quarantine had been put into effect around Japan and the first vaccines had already been developed, but for whatever reason, her immune system rejected them."

Tsugumi searched for the words to say, but could only come up with, "I'm sorry."

"I know I'm not the only person who ever lost a parent to the Virus... but... I was the only one with her. My mother... She always told me I was my father's son, but my father didn't believe her." He reached to his face, and placed two fingertips of his left hand by the outside of his eye. "My eyes are the wrong color. They're not Chinese. I shouldn't have them. So he, my father, didn't care about her."

Daryl's eyes were purple. She had thought he was wearing colored contacts, like he had bleached his hair, but if they weren't, he was right. If he was completely ethnic Chinese he shouldn't have them. His eyes should be brown, and yet they weren't. Maybe his ancestry was mixed so far up the family tree no one remembered, but the chances of that being the case on both sides of the family so that the purple eye color would emerge...

"When she was dying, even at the very end, he wouldn't visit her," said Daryl. "I was only ten, and I didn't understand anything; what they were doing her, why some days it was okay for me to visit her and other days it was not, and no one would tell me anything. And when it got bad, when the crystals covered her body, even I couldn't convince myself to see her... Even though I was the only one..."

He choked, his eyes rimmed with tears, and Tsugumi wanted to reach out to him, but knowing how he felt she stayed her hand and waited in sympathetic silence.

"When I think about my last visit, all I can remember was how she reached for me. Her arm was covered in crystals, and the only thing I could think of was that if I hugged her I'd die. I was vaccinated, I should have been safe or I would have come down with symptoms long before then, but I could not convince myself to touch her. My own mother was dying and I more afraid of catching it from her than I was willing to say good-bye... She died alone, and it didn't have to be that way. I hated myself, but I never could shake the fear. So that's why... even though it doesn't make sense, even though there is no longer an Apocalypse Virus..."

"Daryl," said Tsugumi softly, "you didn't have to force yourself to say all this..."

He shook his head. "I want you to know," he said. "It's important; why I sometimes pull away from you, why I don't like to be touched. And I'm... sorry about it because..." He sighed and sucked in a breath. "Because I want to spend more time with you."

She smiled. "You don't have to apologize for that."

"But I want something closer, more than just friends, and I know that's going to be hard if... if I..."

Tsugumi flushed. More than just friends? "Something closer?" she echoed.

He looked away. "This is coming out wrong. I didn't think it would be this hard to ask."

Daryl had probably never asked any girl before, and his inexperience with something as simple as friendship didn't help. But he had shared a part of himself with her, a part she hadn't seen, a part that was still very vulnerable. He wanted her to understand, and she did, but she had to ask herself: Did she want to?

He could be both kind and cruel, she had seen both sides of him now, and there was no doubt in her mind that he wanted, needed, something or someone to anchor his life. But it would be a lot of work to make him whole. He _was_ broken, though not in the way that Ayase had thought. It wasn't the fighting that had gotten to him. It was the fear, the self-loathing, perhaps a desire to control that which he could not, and Tsugumi did not know if she had what it took to repair him.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"It's okay," she said, and she wondered if she should help him. If she helped him now, would she always be helping him? Would he ever learn on his own? "If you have something to say, you can say it."

Daryl met her eyes and looked away again. "We should probably get going, so we don't end up having lunch too late."

She sighed, disappointed. "All right."

"But while we walk, Tsugumi, can I hold your hand?"

Perhaps the moment hadn't passed after all. She barely could contain a grin and her voice took on a mischievous tone. "Daryl, do you have a crush on me?"

His reaction... was not what she had expected. He paled and looked quite stricken. Maybe it was too soon for any teasing. He had blamed himself so much for being afraid, and yet what he had told her had clearly taken more courage than he gave himself credit for. Maybe if she looked deeper, she would find even more.

"If that's true, I'm okay with it," she said, changing to a lighter smile. "But you're going to have to work hard if you want to be my boyfriend."

His shoulders sagged in relief and he returned her smile. "I'm okay with it."

She extended her hand, which he took in his, and she could tell from the nervousness in his grip that it was a difficult gesture for him, even for something he badly wanted, but he was determined to try. Work hard indeed. If he was willing to do it, maybe it would not be so bad.

* * *

_I hope Daryl doesn't come off as out of character in this chapter, since it relies more on my invented backstory than anything supported in Guilty Crown itself. When I started writing "Little Heart" I really wanted to figure out how Daryl became the person he is. His relationship with his father is clearly strained, but we don't know anything about his mother other than General Yan believed her to be unfaithful._

_She's clearly not in the picture anymore since Daryl's birthday scene only shows him waiting for his father. Though I could have written his parents as divorced or separated, my feeling is that if they were, Daryl would have been primarily raised by his mother due to General Yan's ambivalence towards him. The fact that Daryl believed he _could _expect his father at his birthday, tells me that they have functioned together as family to some degree. So I decided that despite whatever had happened between Daryl's parents in the past, they had stayed married and then his mother passed away, which is why we do not see her. Tying her death to the Apocalypse Virus also was convenient for giving birth to Daryl's fear of infection._


	13. Chapter 13: Dating

Chapter 13: Dating

Daryl had no clear concept of how often they should meet, but Tsugumi took care of that for him. Each Sunday they did something different; a tech expo, an amusement park, a day hike. They ate at a restaurant that served sushi on little boats that sailed on a track around the room. Sundays used to be just another day, but now he looked forward to them, now he declined the overtime when his boss asked. He wanted to see Tsugumi.

And his coworkers knew it now. About once a week she would pack a lunch for him, and they would meet on his way to work. The bento box she gave him was a girly aqua, which made comments unavoidable, but he found he did not mind as much as he thought. It was nice to have someone who cared, and though she said he didn't need to, he would return the favor by cooking dinner for her another time. It turned out that Tsugumi loved steamed fish, and he'd worked up the courage to joke that it was because she was part cat.

She hadn't denied it, but she smiled.

"Maybe you should give me a scratch on the head sometime," she said.

"Maybe," he agreed, though he did not touch her.

After their latest dinner Tsugumi curled up on the couch while he washed the dishes.

"Argo's thinking of coming back to Tokyo next month," said Tsugumi.

"Who's that?" Daryl asked.

"A friend from Funeral Parlor. Some of us are thinking of having a reunion while he's here; Aya, Shu, Bungi, and everyone else who made it through to the end. It's been long enough, and it would be nice to see people again."

"It sounds like it would be a trap for me," said Daryl, though his tone was light as he laid the dishes out on the rack.

"Well, you're my boyfriend now, and you're no longer part of the GHQ, so it should be all right." She paused, and he could see her brow furrow in thought. "Does that mean you want to come?"

He chuckled. "I'll go if you want me to, but really, I don't know anyone in Funeral Parlor besides you. I would just be your date. I wouldn't have anyone else to talk to."

"We could fix that," she said, suddenly sitting up.

"We could?" He looked at her, puzzled.

"Aye!" Tsugumi smiled. "Aya still lives in Tokyo, and I bet we could convince Shu to come."

"Shu Ouma?"

"What other Shu would you be thinking of?"

Daryl dried his hands on a towel, uncertain if he wanted to meet Shu Ouma again. They had never properly met face to face, but Shu had incapacitated Daryl and his Endlave enough times that it had been embarrassing. Even with the power of the Void Genom, it did not seem reasonable for a teenage boy on foot to possibly take down an Endlave, and yet Shu had done it again and again.

"Didn't you say he had gone to Osaka for college? That's not a quick trip."

"It's not," said Tsugumi, as she got up from the couch, "but he'll be coming back at the end of July for summer break. His family still lives in Tokyo. I don't think it'll be hard to convince him if Aya is involved. We can make it a double date!"

"Are they seeing each other?"

"Not technically, but they probably should be. Aya's too self-sacrificing to say anything to him, and while I think Shu likes her, he's still a little hung up over Inoreen."

Daryl frowned. "Why do I get the feeling neither of them would ordinarily be up for this? Especially if one of them is still trying to get over his last girlfriend."

"I miss Inoreen too," said Tsugumi, and for a moment her voice was touched by melancholy, "but I want to see Shu smile again. It'll be fun! Just pick a place to meet that's good for four. They do like each other's company even if they're not dating."

"I guess if there's four of us, the easiest thing would be to go out someplace to eat. Did you want to go to Yappari Curry again?"

Tsugumi shook her head. "No, let's go somewhere new, so we'll all have something to talk about. The whole purpose of this is so you get to make friends with other people. Aya's already been to Yappari too." She scratched her head, just behind one of the cat ears. "Oh, I know! How about we go eat those buns you like, Chinese-style."

"You mean go out for dim sum?"

"Is that what they call it? Where they push the carts around with the little steamers? I thought it was something else."

Daryl wracked his brain and realized he'd use the Chinese term more common in America than Japan. "_Yum cha,_" he said. "Well, if you want that we can't visit one of those _yum cha _cafes. That's a very Japanese-style of serving it and it's not very authentic. We'd probably have to go to Yokohama to find the right kind of restaurant."

Yokohama had the largest Chinatown in Japan, and most of its founders had been Cantonese, who would have brought a tradition of dim sum with them when they settled.

"That's just a half hour away from Tokyo if we take the train," said Tsugumi. "It's not too far for something special. I bet Ayase and Shu would be up for it. And maybe we can ride up to the top of the Yokohama Marine Tower afterwards. I heard the view from the observation deck is fantastic."

"But I told you, that's a breakfast or a lunch thing. It's not something you take someone to dinner for."

"So we'll make it a lunch. We don't have to make it a fancy night out. It's just a meeting between friends."

"I guess."

Tsugumi took his hand, and though he'd told her she could stop asking permission, her touch still unnerved him, and he could not stop a reluctant twitch. He wondered if it would ever feel normal.

"You said once that the chicken buns reminded you of family, so you must have had some good memories."

"I do," he admitted. "But they feel like they all happened a long time ago. Chinese like to have family gatherings. You can see that when you go to a restaurant and there are all these large tables where they can seat eight people at a time. Going out for dim sum was the one thing my parents would do together with my grandmother and me. It was the only time we really felt like a normal family. I could look around at everybody else at the other tables and convince myself that we weren't really any different."

Tsugumi squeezed his hand. She was trying to reassure him, and he could feel his heartbeat rise, just a bit.

"Funeral Parlor was like family for me," said Tsugumi. "You never know. Maybe the others will want to adopt you." She grinned. "More seriously, you like the food, but when was the last time you had any properly and not from the convenience store?"

Daryl tried to think if he and his father had ever eaten any together since his mother had died, and he found a memory. He was thirteen, about to be sent back to the United States for training... He had been nervous and begged his father for a favor, to spend one day together before he left. His fourteen birthday was coming and he was going to celebrate alone at an academy where he knew no one.

His father, to his joy, had agreed. In lieu of a cake they had gone out to lunch for dim sum, just the two of them. It was the last time Daryl could remember his father behaving as one. When Daryl returned to Japan, he was no longer a child, and instead an older teenager his father did not care to know.

"Too long," he said. He sighed. "All right, we can do it. You tell your friends and I'll find us a place to eat."

She smiled, and Daryl ruefully wondered if the warm feelings he got from seeing it were worth it, if he might be giving up too much of himself for her.

-GC-

"So you're the crazy pilot," said Tsugumi's friend.

She had introduced herself as Ayase Shinomiya, and for the first time Daryl saw the face of the Funeral Parlor pilot who had taken his Steiner and made it her own. He hadn't known what to expect, but it hadn't been another teenager, let alone one in a wheelchair.

"I'm very sorry about the trouble I caused you," he said, and he bowed deeply in apology.

When he raised his head, he saw her smile, and she said, "You're not just saying that to impress Tsugumi, are you?"

The three of them had met just outside the girls' apartment building, since Tsugumi did not think that Ayase should come to the restaurant by herself, and now that Daryl had seen her, he could understand why. Shu, on the other hand, was to join them there.

"No," he said, uneasily. "Of course not."

Daryl did not feel that he was trying to impress Tsugumi, though when he thought about it, he did not feel particularly sorry either. This Ayase had been another pilot, so she must have attacked enough people she had no personal grudge against, much as any soldier at the GHQ would have done. She should understand. Maybe that's why she had smiled.

And her smile was still there.

"I have to admit it was terribly hard to drag it out of Tsugumi that she was actually dating you," said Ayase, "but lately she's been buying food she didn't used to eat, she's spacing out at school, and she even told me she had evening plans one night when she never goes out. Finally when I caught her making two sets of bentos she couldn't hide it anymore."

Tsugumi screwed up her face in a defensive sulk. "I thought you might be a little upset."

Ayase sighed. "Not yet anyway." She looked up at Daryl. "Of course, if you hurt her I will be."

Daryl was not entirely certain if he should be afraid of someone in a wheelchair, but there was a fire in Ayase's eyes that made him rethink just how helpless she might actually be. Maybe she didn't need an Endlave in order to be dangerous.

"I don't want to," he said evenly. "I'm not here to fight Funeral Parlor anymore, and Tsugumi... She's important to me."

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Tsugumi beam and he smiled affectionately at her. He had to keep trying, for her.

"I suppose so," said Ayase. "Well, only time will tell. But listen, Tsugumi has told me that you have some... how do I put this... You may have some hang-ups remaining from your time in the GHQ."

Daryl looked questioning at Tsugumi. He wasn't mad, and a part of him was a little surprised he wasn't, but he didn't understand why she would share that part of him and then still expect her friends to be able to accept him.

"I'm sorry," said Tsugumi. "This was when I was worried about you, so I wanted to talk to someone. I find talking with Ayase helps me think things through."

"Though you don't always listen to me," Ayase said wrily. "Listen, Daryl, I don't know what your demons are and what you do with them is frankly not my business. To be honest, you look like a perfectly normal guy that if I didn't know anything else about you I would be fine with Tsugumi dating. But if you feel you're about to have an episode, go have it out by yourself and don't drag her into it."

"Aya!" said Tsugumi.

"I think he knows what I mean," said Ayase.

Daryl nodded. "I do, and I mean it when I say I don't want to hurt Tsugumi. I'm trying very hard to be a better person than I was."

Ayase smiled. "That's good to know. Shall we go now? We don't want Shu to get there before us."

* * *

_Thanks for all the chapter 12 reviews! It seems people really liked that one. It turned out much better than I thought, but I hadn't realized how much until I saw how many of you commented on it._

_In a romance fanfic I like to see the courtship drawn out a little (though still making progress). I know it means a delayed payoff for both the writer and the reader, but I think the wait makes the first hug/kiss/etc sweeter when it finally happens._

_I found Wikipedia has a little entry on Chinese food in Japan, which I used for this chapter. I find it interesting that some countries use dim sum and others yum cha for what (to the non-Chinese speaker) is essentially the same dining experience. Both terms are Cantonese, but one is referring to the actual food and one to the entire meal (tea included)._


	14. Chapter 14: Social

Chapter 14: Social

They arrived at the Lucky Dragon restaurant a few minutes early and got themselves a table while they waited for Shu. Before they arrived, Daryl had warned her that they no longer had carts pushed by servers with steaming metal baskets of dumplings and other savory dishes, which made Tsugumi wonder if she would be missing some kind of tradition. Rather, each table had a screen set into its surface with a display to check off what and how much they wanted. Daryl said it was so the kitchen would know what to bring them, and the food would be fresh instead of having sat in carts waiting for a customer.

"Anyone have any preferences?" asked Daryl.

They were seated at a square table for four and Daryl took one of the seats closest to the screen. Tsugumi sat down to his left and Ayase across from her.

"Is there anything with fish?" said Tsugumi. She pulled in her chair and leaned over to peer at the display.

"Something with noodles," said Ayase.

The menu was in Chinese. Tsugumi could recognize some of the characters, those that had been carried over into the Japanese kanji system, but others she couldn't recall at all. Someone on the restaurant staff though had helpfully added katakana writing alongside so Japanese speakers could at least sound out the names of the food items even if they didn't know what they were.

"I don't see any ramen," said Tsugumi.

"Those aren't the only Chinese noodles," said Daryl, and when she looked up she could see a hint of irritation that he was not completely able to hide. "And they're not a part of dim sum," he added. "As for the fish, I see some dumplings that have it." He pointed at one item on the list, which had a word she would be able to read since "fish" was written the same in both languages. "Most of the items will probably come with three or four of a kind on a dish; dumplings, buns, and other things."

"We should wait for Shu before ordering," said Ayase, looking towards the front of he restaurant.

"Do you think one of us should go outside and look for him?" asked Tsugumi.

"He should be fine. He's blind, but he's not helpless."

"Blind?" said Daryl.

"Oh, you don't know..." said Tsugumi, and she proceeded to explain to him how Shu had lost his sight while eliminating the Apocalypse Virus. "He's not completely blind, so he can still travel on his own, but he doesn't see nearly as well as he used to. He says everything's really fuzzy and he doesn't get much color anymore. I gave him directions though that can be read out to him by his phone. Whenever he gets to an intersection his phone tells him what street he's on and which one he is about to cross."

Ayase pointed. "There."

"I'll get him," said Tsugumi, spotting Shu over by the entrance. She smiled at Ayase and Daryl. "You two talk some more, maybe figure out some of the food we're going to eat."

Daryl looked at Ayase. "Any objections?"

She shrugged. "Just tell me what kinds of food we've got here and I'll tell you yes or no."

Tsugumi bounded up to the entrance where Shu Ouma was standing, headset over one ear and a white cane in the hand of his artificial right arm.

"Hello, Tsugumi," he said as she planted herself firmly in his limited field of vision.

"Hello, Shu!" she said. "Was it the headband again?"

He nodded. "No one else wears that kind of shape on their head."

Though he smiled, there was a certain sadness to him that he'd never worn during the days she had known him to be a part of Funeral Parlor. Just looking at him she could see how the weight of Inori's death still hung around his shoulders as though there was no possible way to free himself. But Shu still lived, he pushed on, as though doing anything else would dishonor Inori's sacrifice.

Maybe it was too soon to expect him to be over her. Tsugumi wished he would look at Ayase, but seeing him here all these months later, she was not sure he was ready. Perhaps a double date had not been such a good idea, but she had avoided the term with both of them in anticipation that this might happen. If nothing else, they were still friends, and in any case it was good to see Shu again.

"So what's the occasion?" asked Shu as Tsugumi led him back to their table. "You said you have a boyfriend now? Is it an anniversary already?"

Tsugumi felt a warmth tinge her cheeks and said, "It hasn't been that long yet. But Argo's coming back to Tokyo at the start of next month, and my boyfriend said he wouldn't know anyone if he went to the Funeral Parlor reunion with me, so I figured if he knew you and Aya, it might be easier for him."

"It probably would," Shu agreed.

They reached the table, and from there Shu was able to pull out a chair and sit on his own. The conversation between Daryl and Ayase had died when they approached, and she could see Daryl watching Shu with an expression that rivaled some level of confusion.

Tsugumi sucked in a breath. "Shu, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend, Daryl Yan."

The name did not seem to register with Shu. He held out his artificial hand across the table and said, "Pleased to meet you."

Daryl swallowed and shook Shu's hand. "The same to you."

"I feel like I should know you," said Shu. "But I can't remember. Did you ever help Funeral Parlor in some way, maybe through the Kuhouin Group?"

Daryl looked at Tsugumi and she said, "It's up to you."

He glanced down at the table and then back at Shu, his mind made. "We've met indirectly a few times. I used to be an Endlave pilot... for the GHQ."

"Tsugumi's doing the whole fraternizing with the enemy thing," said Ayase, with a mischievous grin. "Except she's not trying to hide it."

Tsugumi stuck out her tongue, not caring about the maturity of the action. "He's not an enemy anymore!"

Daryl coughed and tapped the screen with the menu. "Let's order some food," he said.

-GC-

Initially Tsugumi was not impressed when the first serving of dumplings came out. There were only four in the tiny metal basket, but then more dishes arrived, and more, until their table was well covered in small plates and baskets. There were several kinds of dumplings, a plate of something Daryl called shrimp toast, a plate of rice noodles with beef specifically for Ayase, lots of buns, egg tarts, and a sort of spongy white rice cake that he suggested Tsugumi try in particular.

"It smells good," said Shu.

Ayase eyed the spread. "Are we going to be able to eat all this?"

"Take as much as you want," said Daryl. "If there's a little left over, that's okay. Someone can always take it home for later. Most of this stuff reheats pretty easily as long you steam it again."

Tsugumi piled one of each dumpling on her plate. "I'm not sure I'm going to be able to try everything. Which one's the chicken bun?" There were three bun dishes on the table. Two of them looked rather similar, a white bread save that one had a small mark with food coloring and the other didn't, and the third appeared to be a little brown. Baked rather than steamed?

Daryl pointed at the unmarked white one. "That one. It's probably not as flavorful as the _cha siu bao_ though. _Gai bao_ tends to be a little plainer."

"That's okay. I want to try it."

Maybe it had a more subtle taste, she thought. In any case, she wanted to try one since he liked them, and looking at how much she had on her plate between the dumplings and the rice cake she wasn't sure she could stomach more than one bun. Her gaze drifted over to the egg tarts and she decided she'd have to have one of those too. Maybe if Shu and Ayase didn't want them she could bring the leftovers home.

"So which one of these is which?" asked Ayase, gesturing at the different dumplings with the back end of her chopsticks.

Tsugumi watched Daryl point out the main ingredients that were in each dumpling, or as best he could figure it based off what they had ordered. The servers hadn't always announced which dish they were putting down when they set the plates on the table. He seemed a little more relaxed now that the food had arrived, and Tsugumi liked that he was talking, that it looked like he and Ayase would get along.

She took a bite of the _gai bao_ and Daryl was right in that it was not a burst of flavor, but the chicken was tender and there looked to be some kind of leafy vegetable inside. When she thought about it, eating one was probably like having a sandwich, and not too heavy, so it made for a convenient meal on the go.

Shu speared one of the dumplings with his chopsticks and carefully moved it over to his plate. He had gotten better at controlling his artificial arm since she'd last seen him. Though each movement was deliberate, he wasn't loosing control or resorting to using his left hand, which made Tsugumi smile.

Still, she asked, "Do you need any help, Shu?"

The table was big enough that some of the plates closer to Daryl would be a reach for him.

"I think I'm good," said Shu. "There's so much over here already anyway."

"Mmm... but you should try this one," said Ayase, grabbing a plate of some sort of sesame ball. "It's got bean paste inside."

Tsugumi turned to Daryl. "I told you this was a good idea," she said.

"Yeah," he admitted. "It's nice to go."

"So which one is your favorite? Is it the chicken bun?"

He shook his head. "Actually, it's the _har gow_." He used his chopsticks and held up a translucent dumpling with a large shrimp inside. The skin of the dumpling was carefully pleated in a way that the dumpling itself reminded her of a fat clam. "But it doesn't taste right coming out of the convenience store. It's not something you can microwave; you really need to steam it. And it's a lot of work to make from scratch."

_Har gow_. Tsugumi commited the term to memory as she plucked one off her plate and put it in her mouth. It was very good, warm with what she thought was a hint of pepper.

"If you don't mind my asking," said Shu, "were you piloting one of the Endlaves I fought?" When Daryl did not immediately reply, Shu added, "I'm not the type to hold any grudges if you were."

After a pause, Daryl said, "We met several times; the Leucocyte base, the airport when Funeral Parlor tried to seize the meteorite." He grimaced. "To be honest, you caused me a lot of pain due to the connection between a pilot and an Endlave, but as I've told the others here, I'm not part of the GHQ anymore. I'm not here to hold grudges either, though I might have called you a faceless bastard a few times."

Shu nodded thoughtfully. "I'm sorry about that, and I think I know who you are now."

A sour expression crossed Daryl's face, but Shu either could not see or did not pay attention to it.

"I had to listen to your voice a little bit," said Shu, "but I remember you now. You were in a lot of pain. Now that you have Tsugumi with you, I hope that's not the case anymore."

Daryl sighed. "It's still not easy, but Tsugumi helps, a lot."

"I sometimes have to remind Daryl that he's not alone anymore," said Tsugumi. "He's a little stubborn."

"You're one to talk." But any bite in that remark was taken out by his smile.

"She's definitely stubborn," said Ayase. "Looks like you already have enough experience with that."

"Aya!" Tsugumi pouted.

Shu laughed and added a couple more dumplings to his plate. "I'm glad we got together today. Thanks for suggesting this, Tsugumi."

"Daryl picked the place," she said.

"Then thank you for picking it."

Daryl looked at Shu, confused, and then he quietly said, "You're welcome. I hope you're enjoying it."

"It's really good."

Tsugumi watched as Daryl and Shu began to talk a little more. At first Daryl was hesitant, but with each exchange she could see the tension leave his body, his shoulders relax. Daryl was starting to make friends other than her, and she was happy.

* * *

_Since Shu arrives at the party by himself at the end of Guilty Crown (suggesting that he can travel just fine without help), I am assuming that he is not completely blind, so much as legally blind. He has enough sight that he can do basic activities by himself._

_This may be my last mid-week update before I finish the story. My job is going into crunch time and it's expected to last at least a couple months. Depending on how things go, I might finish before then. I shouldn't have a problem maintaining a once a week posting schedule though, as I can write a chapter a week through my lunch breaks alone._

_Alarum, yeah, I agree Daryl hasn't been that psychotic, though if you look at the series, that part of him tends to comes out under certain circumstances (when he's fighting or provoked by potential infection). For a lot of his non-combat scenes, Daryl's behavior tends to be within the realms of a normal, if irritable, human being. I don't think he's had enough triggery moments in this fanfic to keep bringing out that part of him, but that's not to say another one isn't coming._


	15. Chapter 15: Party

Chapter 15: Party

According to Tsugumi, the Funeral Parlor reunion was not supposed to be a formal affair, but Daryl wouldn't have known from the look of the place they'd chosen to meet. It seemed far too posh for a former terrorist group. Someone had managed to rent out a ballroom at the new Yamato Hotel with catered food and plenty of tables at which to sit. There was even an ice sculpture of a swan in the middle of the room surrounded by slices of fresh fruit.

But when Daryl looked closer at the people who were attending the party, it was clear this was not an event put together by any man of honest business. Even if it wasn't for the fact many of the men did not wear anything more formal than a clean shirt and slacks, there was an edge to all of them; how they looked at each other, how they watched who came through the doors. Most of the people in this room had seen combat.

Tsugumi tugged him along after her, her hand having gradually migrated to his elbow, as though nothing was the matter, but Daryl knew that his entrance had not gone unnoticed. He was a stranger. The looks he received were not hostile, but neither were they inclined to forget him the moment they turned away.

"I feel a little overdressed," said Daryl.

"Nonsense," said Tsugumi.

She had put the tie on him just before they left, which he found hideously uncomfortable. He was going to have to loosen it before eating anything. It was a good thing the room was well air-conditioned. Late July in Tokyo could be brutally hot, and he'd barely managed to make it to the hotel without breaking out in an awful sweat. At least Tsugumi had let him leave the sportsjacket behind, but she'd insisted on long sleeves.

"You look good," she said with a grin.

Of course, she did as well, but she was wearing a pretty sundress which matched the weather just fine, and Tsugumi would not have abandoned her cat ears for anything.

"Do you think Ayase and Shu here yet?" He had looked around, and hadn't seen them.

Ayase had suggested that they let Shu pick her up, so Tsugumi would be free to get ready at Daryl's. He had been uneasy with the notion that they were leaving a blind man pick up a girl in a wheelchair, but Tsugumi had agreed to it before she came over, and by the time she told him of the arrangement it was well past time for him to be able to do anything about it.

"If they're not, they probably will be soon," said Tsugumi, eying him with concern. "You're not feeling panicky are you?"

"No, I'm fine. Just curious."

"Would you like me to introduce you to anyone?"

Daryl peered around at the milling guests. A few faces he recognized as having been on the GHQ's watch list, but most were completely new to him, and there was only one that he realized he had actually seen in person before.

"Him."

He pointed at a man about half the room away from them. The man was tall, slender, with a shock of prematurely gray hair and a pair of round glasses. He held himself in a dignified manner, a cup of wine in one hand and the other tucked behind his waist. At the moment he was speaking to a young couple who seemed to have the utmost respect for him, hanging on each word he said.

"You want to meet Bungi?" said Tsugumi. She sounded surprised.

"Why not?"

"No reason. I just didn't expect you'd pick him." She grinned. "All right, Bungi it is! If you're going to make merry with Funeral Parlor, he is the guy to meet!"

Somehow Daryl did not think that "Bungi" made merry. He looked far too serious, but the fact of the matter was, Daryl had been incarcerated in eyesight of him after his insubordination. The two of them couldn't have talked through the soundproof glass even if they had wanted to, but if he remembered Daryl, it would probably be at least a little favorably. After all, if Daryl had been a prisoner, he probably had done something to piss off the GHQ.

Tsugumi wormed her way through the crowd, doing a much better job that Daryl due to her size. She seemed almost irritated that he couldn't slip through spaces as narrow as she could without having to ask someone to excuse him as he pushed his way through. Then, as soon as they got in speaking distance of her friend, she reached out to tap him on the arm.

"Hi, Bungi! I want you to meet someone!"

He turned and looked at Daryl, who stood beside Tsugumi. His gaze was not hostile, but calculating, remembering. He said, "How do you do? I am Shibungi."

Only one name? Daryl knew from half-forgotten conversations that Shibungi had been the one who handled the day-to-day affairs of Funeral Parlor. He had been their advisor and strategist. It made sense that he would only go by one name, and likely a false one, if he was a man used to hiding, but surely that wasn't necessary anymore.

"I believe I have seen you before," said Shibungi.

Daryl nodded. "I'm Daryl Yan. I was in a cell adjacent to yours a year and a half ago, inside the GHQ headquarters."

"The Kaleidoscope."

"Pardon?"

"It's what Gai Tsutsugami called your Void."

Daryl was not certain how the man had known what his Void was, but then Daryl had not paid much attention to the intricacies of such things as enemy intelligence. Mostly he remembered some sort of enormous bladed weapon slicing into his Endlave. A kaleidoscope was a kid's toy as far as he knew, and not something to be afraid of. He found himself a little insulted. Though he did not know much about Voids in general, he knew his own Void had been a reflective barrier, and a strong one; not a cheap trinket given over to a child.

"I guess he did not like me much," said Daryl.

Shibungi wore a thin smile. "No, he did not. But I take a practical view of things and if you are here with Tsugumi I will assume she does not find you antagonistic to our surviving numbers. Even if you do harbor any remaining ill will, I find it doubtful that you would be able to act with so many former enemies in this room."

Somewhere in the ballpark of seventy to eighty people, by Daryl's estimate. They would not be good odds. And he did not fail to notice that while speaking with Shibungi, others around them had taken notice. No one was staring, but there were discreet glances when they did not expect him to be looking. They were not necessarily close enough to have heard the conversation, but clearly some signal had been passed.

"Hell of a way to welcome someone," said Daryl.

"Old precautions die hard," said Shibungi. "But don't worry. Just because you are a former GHQ pilot does not mean you cannot stay. If nothing happens you will not be harmed. Feel free to enjoy the dinner."

Then with a curt bow, Shibungi walked away.

"That went well," said Tsugumi.

"That was well?" Daryl stared at her.

"Bungi isn't much of a people person, though he is the one who arranged this. He's got a government job now, so he's got lots of connections."

To what? The yakuza? There was no way that someone like Shibungi could have a clean record.

"You have strange friends."

Tsugumi fixed him with a look. "If the GHQ had defeated Funeral Parlor, if this was a GHQ party instead, would you have been allowed to bring me as your date?"

"No," he said quietly. "Of course not. If you were still alive you'd either be a prisoner or a fugitive, and if I was known to have feelings for you... I'd probably be one or the other as well."

"I'll take my strange friends over yours."

Daryl wasn't certain he would have called anyone in the GHQ his friends, not even Rowan, but the point was made.

"Still, I'm a little surprised that Shibungi seemed to know exactly who I was," said Daryl. "I was only a second lieutenant, and hardly a decision maker in the GHQ. I can't imagine I was important enough to be put on a watch list by Funeral Parlor."

"Maybe you weren't," said Tsugumi, after a moment's thought, "but if Gai had named your Void and Shibungi remembered it, we probably used it during one of our operations."

"What? I think I'd remember if something that big was extracted out of my body."

"That's the thing!" She held up a knowledgeable finger. "Until Shu got better control over the Void Genom, people _wouldn't_ remember getting their Void extracted."

Daryl sighed. "If you're right then we did meet face to face before. He didn't say anything when we met at dim sum."

"It probably would have been awkward."

"Probably, but when would he have had the opportunity..."

Daryl thought back to the Tennozu High School festival. It was the only time he could remember being in physical sight of Shu Ouma, but he couldn't recall having blanked out at any point. Major Segai would have given him all kinds of crap if he had gaps in his memory coming back from a reconnaissance mission.

A voice bellowed out from the doorway to the dining hall, announcing the arrival of a popular newcomer. Daryl thought he might have seen the face before, but otherwise he didn't know the man. He was young, probably just a year or two out of high school, with a buzz cut and a thuggish look to him, though Daryl would not have said that to his face.

"Argo!" said Tsugumi.

The friend coming back from Kyoto. So this was the one whose return heralded all of this.

"I suppose you'll want me to meet him too," said Daryl.

Tsugumi grinned. "Aye!"

_Forget being a cat_, he thought, as she bounded ahead of him. _She's more like a squirrel._

She quickly caught Argo's attention and started waving in Daryl's direction. At first Argo seemed to be enjoying Tsugumi's conversation, much like a put upon older brother, but by the time Daryl made his way over, the humor was gone.

"What are you doing here?" said Argo. His tone was sharp, and he did not bother to hide the challenge in his voice.

Daryl frowned. "I am here at Tsugumi's invitation."

"Bullshit."

"She is right there if you want to ask her."

Argo did not turn his head. "I heard what she said," said Argo. "She said you're her boyfriend. I find that hard to believe, but not impossible if she doesn't know the full extent of everything you've done."

Full extent? The thought made Daryl laugh. What did he fancy himself, some sort of officer? "I have not hidden that I was a GHQ pilot from anyone in Funeral Parlor. Shibungi knows. Ayase Shinomiya knows. Shu Ouma knows."

He could see Tsugumi complaining, pulling on Argo's sleeve, asking him to be reasonable. Of course Daryl had been part of the GHQ, but he wasn't anymore. There was no reason to hold grudges. But Argo wasn't listening. He was not taking his eyes off Daryl, which meant Daryl had to watch him. Daryl was not about to take an unexpected fist to the face.

"You don't know him, Tsugumi," said Argo. "You were only ever at the command center to coordinate the attack, so you didn't see everything that those of us on the ground did. You only had what the cameras gave you."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"Do you remember what the GHQ did at Roppongi Fort?"

Daryl did. "We were within our rights," he snapped. "Those people inside were unvaccinated. They could have been infected."

"Like hell they were!"

Other people were staring now.

"And even if they were," said Argo, a little softer now, "there was no need for a public execution."

"Wasn't my call and I was not part of the firing line," said Daryl.

"You didn't have to be, but you can't pretend you weren't involved." Argo clenched one hand into a fist. "You were there! And you personally shot an unarmed mother in front of her own child. Let me ask you, murderer, is that something you ever shared with Tsugumi?"

* * *

_I had to rewatch the Roppongi Fort episode a few times to make sure I got this right. Argo is the one who identifies Daryl for Gai (leading to the plan for using his Void) so he definitely knows who Daryl is and what he looks like. Daryl's killing of the mother is not shown on any of the camera feeds watched by Tsugumi or Shu, and from the angle of the shot, Daryl should not have been on screen ever, so it's unlikely they would have seen what he'd done. Shu might have forgiven him, given the experience he had at the end of the last episode, but I don't think Tsugumi would ever have become friends with him if she had known this from the start of the story._


End file.
